June 1, 2005

"A sea change in the way news is disseminated."

Today's Nashville City Paper has an editorial noting the role bloggers played in quickly disseminating news of last week's stunning arrests of four members of the Tennessee legislature on federal corruption charges as a result of the two-year FBI undercover probe called "Tennessee Waltz."

The revelations of Operation Tennessee Waltz last week came swiftly and stunningly. How they came was via one of the older forms of mass communication and one of the newest. ... one of the newest purveyors of news took over as bloggers began to take bits and pieces of what news organizations were reporting and laying them end-to-end in real time on their blogs.

Essentially, what the bloggers were doing was cribbing news from established news organizations while giving them credit for their original reporting. It was effective and lightning-quick in disseminating information to news consumers savvy enough to find the sites.

Whether the legislators charged in Operation Tennessee Waltz will be found guilty of the charges against them remains to be seen. While everyone is innocent until proven guilty, the two-year operation by federal and state authorities has surely built up a wealth of evidence that would indicate a strong case.

But the way this story was reported signals a sea change in the way news is disseminated.

You can see my original post here and my Tennessee Waltz archive here.

But - mark my words - bloggers increasingly will be doing original reporting.

Nashville City Paper, it should be noted, was the first paper to put news of the arrests on its website. And it remains the only newspaper in town that allows readers to post comments to any story on the paper's website.

The City Paper's website isn't a blog - but it's not too far from being one. And that's what it ought to become - a group blog written by all of the paper's reporters and editors, where news of the day is updated in real time. Add a few low-cost digital camcorders to the mix and NashvilleCityPaper.com could become the fastest, most interactive and most useful news operation .

UPDATE: Blake Wylie is taking issue with the City Paper's contention that news of the arrests first "broke" on the radio show Teddy Bart's Roundtable. (Actually, it's not the City Paper's contention - Bart trumpted the scoop in a press release. But is it accurate?

Wylie is crediting blogging legislator Stacey Campfield with breaking the news first.

But best as I can tell, the City Paper is right: news of the arrests was first broken on the Roundtable.

Here is why there is some confusion: the timestamps on Campfield's blog are wrong. Wylie thinks they are off by one hour, and if Wylie is right, then Campfield indeed was first out with the news.

But to me it appears Campfield's blog's time zone is set wrong by two hours. To test his blog's time setting, I just posted a comment to his blog, at 2:46 p.m. Central time today. But the time stamp on it says the comment was posted at 12:46 p.m.

Campfield's first blog announcement of the arrests is stamped 6:57 a.m., which would means his first post on the arrests was actually posted at 8:57 a.m. Central time on the day of the arrests, and his first post with names of Ford, Newton, Bowers and Crutchfield, marked 7:15 a.m., actually was posted at 9:15 a.m., Central time.

That would fit with the timing of the arrests as I understand them. I got an email at 8:56 a.m. (one minute before Campfield posted his first blog entry) from someone else who has Legislative Plaza connections telling me that some lawmakers had "just" been arrested.

So, while it appears the radio show was first, blogs were a close second, beating even the local newspapers and TV news to publication of news of the arrests.