I have great empathy for Latino Review and Collider, both of which stuck their neck out this week – and took the kind of tone that allows Traditional Media to marginalize them internally – and complained about specific cases of The Trades running news that these sites claim they already broke as new news and even Exclusive.
Anyone who has lived on the web for a while knows about this. It starts with The Trades and others not picking up on reports made online, even if they are able to confirm them with a phone call. Then there is a lull. Then, suddenly, the news “breaks” in the trades or the LA Times or wherever.
Sometimes, it is not an intentional game at all. MCN’s reporting on the many exits of film critics a month or so ago inspired the very web-friendly and smart and honest Sean P. Means of the Salt Lake City Tribune to make a simple list of the critics on his blog on April 2. It was a clever thing to do and with all the coverage we were doing here, we didn’t remember that lists always get more attention. Still, I saw dozens of news reports about “a newspaper in Salt Lake City made a list.” Happy for Sean… and a little grumpy, as most of the people who reported on The List were reading about the firings as a building issue – whether reported by a newspaper, by MCN, by STV, by Glenn Kenny himself, or whomever – on MCN.
That’s how it goes.
But I pretty much know that we were never going to hear “Movie City News, which has been covering this issue in depth for a year, made a list…” Not will we hear that the issue was put into play in Traditional Media by our coverage of it, culled from many reports.
If we culled, should we get credit? But isn’t that the rub of the medium as it currently exists?
The truth is, The Trades and other Traditional Media would rather go find silly little non-stories from little sites that no one reads or to hype personal friends who no one reads rather than ever even acknowledge the existence of web sites that have an audience. Some reluctantly were forced to acknowledge Nikki Finke, as she made herself part of the WGA Strike story. But even there… she used to be “one of them” and she still kisses ass to TM all the time. But basically, they live in the hope that by not talking about truly competitive New Media, it will go away… a familiar theme from the current election year battles.
The excuse, which I think is sometimes conscious and sometimes subconscious, is that to Traditional Media, the web = rumor, not reporting. And often, this is true. However, this is also true at The Trades and more often than ever, in Old Media.
It is fair to say that if you read something on the web, you, as a reporter, really need to check it out to see if it is valid. (In the era of the TM blog, however, more false crap is thrown into “legitimacy” by TM than ever.) It is unfair to say, however, that if you make the call and the studio/publicist/agent doesn’t want it to be publicized right then that the story never broke online.
The Trades are used to being first. And as much as LatinoReview wants to talk about how they scraped to report whatever story first – and the humorous part of all of this is that we are fighting over scraps, like the scoop on what Jason Reitman’s next film will be – like the trades, these things come into their lives because someone has a vested interest in talking. Someone’s assistant told someone. And at The Trades, it’s “someone’s agent told someone.” This isn’t brain surgery.
Still… the game is afoot. And if The Trades or some other TM hasn’t run it, information remains suspect in the industry. As a result, the leverage The Trades have remains in place. If someone wants to break something on a web site, The Trades may – and have – intentionally avoid repeating the story because they can’t claim the scoop. And it’s only fair to note that this has been true in the fight between Variety and The Hollywood Reporter for years… where a story that breaks ‘exclusively” in one gets buried or disappears in the other for weeks. The fact that The Trades can’t or won’t acknowledge that they are rarely serious about breaking news – and never about investigative reporting… and just occasionally about investigative thinking – is what makes for the hypocritical behavior. It’s the old “setting the price” joke.
We have seen a similar thing with Nikki Finke’s “box office coverage.” It started when one studio gave her “early” info on opening numbers and it got picked up on Drudge. Now, even though Nikki has no insight into or interest in box office – she always mocked people like me for covering it at all – she runs this studio bather weekly because with Drudge linking it, it is given legitimacy. And if you read her regularly, as I must, you will see that even when she is on one of her “sick days,” she somehow manages to “cover” the box office. It’s not news… it’s business for her. And understandably so. But while the early numbers are, in fact, coming out of a studio, which makes them fairly reliable, the spin attached is completely manipulated… and thus, pretty illegitimate.
This is the media field we are all running on these days…
And as whinny as Collider or Latino Review or I might sound complaining in any way, calling this stuff out is the only way to change it. These same outlets do feel compelled to acknowledge reporting from all media that they know they would be embarrassed by – mostly in private – if they didn’t tip the hat.
That brings up a different kind of issue for us at MCN, where we know that many sites get many of their links from MCN and rarely tip their hat. But we are sympathetic, because if they tipped their hat every time, it would look like they worked for us.
The rules of this culture are still in flux… politeness is not necessarily the model… professionalism is not necessarily the model… as usual, fear is the model.

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