pick a race you can win.

Steve Rubel makes a great point today at MicroPersuasion, which got me thinking about something.

I dream of running a campaign where the information is released free-for-all, with interested parties (whether they be print journalists, bloggers, or simply interested people) have access to the same information, at the same time.

I will not get to do this any time soon, because it would massacre the potential for coverage in many major traditional media outlets.  The most important things I can offer to journalists I've worked with are relevance, accuracy and access, but while these are essential, they lack the pure excitement that getting something first, or something exclusively, can generate.

This is a really bad call on the part of everyone involved.

Social media means information is faster than journalism.  When someone was shot on the subway system, I heard about it through Twitter, several minutes before there had been anything authoritative on television or online about it.  It's the same logic as an album leak - if information exists, it will be shared first through unofficial channels.

This happens, because journalists are, and should be, held to a higher standard than anyone else sharing information.  Being better at times means being slower.  If you're researching, fact-checking, and carefully crafting a balanced article that deals with all aspects of a problem, the value isn't in doing it first.

The value of good journalism is doing it BETTER than the layman.  Not sooner.  Insisting that first is genuinely important encourages the audience to forget that.

Newspapers, television, magazines and radio aren't fast enough to win on speed without hampering the flow of information, or sacrificing quality.  But they've proven the value of careful, skillful investigation and exploration an innumerable number of times.

There was a time when daily was fast enough to be the source of new.  That time has passed, and we should adapt.