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News & ArtsThursday, July 22, 2010
News / Media / Teh Internets How to Get a "Scoop"
Posted by Dominic Holden on Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 7:49 PM
Over at PubliCola, a local politics blog, a curious thing happened today. A post showed up this morning with links to the state's draft environmental impact study on the deep-bore tunnel, which the state only released after the Stranger filed a records request (a records request that the state considered filing an injunction to block). So what's strange about that? This morning's Publicola's post was timestamped for yesterday evening—it was stamped 15 minutes before the same documents appeared on Slog, making it look like PubliCola's post went up first.
There's all sorts of evidence that Publicola's document-dump post wasn't published last night. First, comments on Publicola's post didn't begin to appear until this morning—there were no comments made on the post yesterday evening. The post on Slog got lots of comments right way and all of PubliCola's other posts last night also got plenty of comments last night. Second, the RSS feed for the post arrived just before 4:00 a.m., while the RSS feed for other stories last night arrived last night. Also, several folks I spoke with today say they thought it was odd that they didn't see it last night and then, voila, there it was today, timestamped for yesterday. And I didn't see the story when I visited Publicola last night. And finally, unlike ever other post in the last day, this one post wasn't in PubliCola's Twitter feed. If it had been in the Twitter feed—again, like every other post—you could see what time it actually went on the site.
PubliCola likes to brag about its scoops. Well, one way to get scoops, I suppose, is to play fast and loose with your timestamps. And if you're incapable of telling the truth about the time...
Anyway, I've been going over these documents and talking to some experts. I'll have a post tomorrow morning with the description of the contents of the documents and thoughts from some local experts on the tunnel, the waterfront, and the environmental impact study process. And it'll be timestamped for the time I actually post it, not the time I wished I'd posted it.
5
whaaaaaaaaa
wha wha whaaaaaaaaaaa
damn.
dom dropped his pacifier.
again...
can someone find it for him and shut him the fuck up?
wha wha whaaaaaaaaaaa
damn.
dom dropped his pacifier.
again...
can someone find it for him and shut him the fuck up?
6
Right. I'm sure Josh would have no conceivable reason to hold a grudge against The Stranger, right?
8
@5: I was beginning to think that you were from PubliCola, but then I realized that your comment isn't timestamped for yesterday.
9
Dominic has his facts wrong. PubliCola obtained these documents independently yesterday afternoon. Dominic should have called PubliCola before filing this post. He didn't. Read Morning Fizz tomorrow; we'll be sure to do an item on it.
10
9
you girls should definitely celebrate this scoop,
and dominic stepping in his own shit over it.
maybe with some red wine.
you girls should definitely celebrate this scoop,
and dominic stepping in his own shit over it.
maybe with some red wine.
12
So is there some sort of reason that everyone at the Stranger seems to have such a vendetta against former writers? And I"m seriously asking, I don't quite understand the "feud" between The Stranger and PubliCola or The Stranger and Seattle Crime Blog.
14
@9: Erica@publicola wrote:
Straw man. Dominic made no claims about how PubliCola obtained those documents.
Why should he have done so?
Dominic has his facts wrong. PubliCola obtained these documents independently yesterday afternoon.
Straw man. Dominic made no claims about how PubliCola obtained those documents.
Dominic should have called PubliCola before filing this post.
Why should he have done so?
17
@9: Ahem. My RSS Reader (Google Reader) shows that the post was received at 1:59am this morning, differing from your alleged publish time of 6:57pm yesterday. No other post in the last day shows anywhere near this discrepancy - one shows nearly a half-hour difference between the published time and the received them, the rest at most one minute.
While I have your ear, are you going to post a story about McGinn's approval ratings from this week? After all, this was from an actual poll from an actual polling organization, and not a quiz that 50-odd random vistors to the Seattle Channel's website that you felt so noteworthy to devoted two blog posts to.
While I have your ear, are you going to post a story about McGinn's approval ratings from this week? After all, this was from an actual poll from an actual polling organization, and not a quiz that 50-odd random vistors to the Seattle Channel's website that you felt so noteworthy to devoted two blog posts to.
18
Big deal...SLOG and Publicola are tools of the State Party Apparatus. You both get your marching orders from Olympia.
19
I have no idea about the time stamps, but I can verify that Dominic had the documents before I sent a download link to him to get a copy of them, and that the Stranger staff (a few of them) were working on them before I contacted them.
I sent (double checking my sent items) an email to Dominic yesterday at 3:38pm to confirm if he'd been able to get them, and giving them the URL I had received about 60 seconds earlier from a FOIA I'd filed a few weekends earlier--an FOIA I filed out of curiosity for the process of it, and that I figured I could kick the results of over to my journalist pals if it was worthwhile.
Since I'm (I think?) friendly and on good terms with both sides of these guys, and because I really wanted to make sure this got 'out' I sent an email exactly 9 minutes (3:47pm) later to Josh and Erica at Publicola with the same URL. Erica replied at 6:40pm asking me if it was the draft document set not slated for September/October. I replied after 10pm confirming it as I was busy till then.
As for time stamps, I just looked at my Google Reader, which has both Slog and Publicola. I know for a fact (from messing with time stamps on my own website before, because I'm a geek and all) that Google Reader caches the actual time that a post is first crawled from them approximately, unless something has changed in the past few months since I last paid attention to time stamps for something else. That is, if you post at 9:00am, and Google Reader crawls you at 10:00am, Google Reader will report the post at the crawl time. I think--this has been my experience before.
A screen shot of Erica's post is here:
http://www.joeszilagyi.com/images/Google…
It shows a 3:55 AM time stamp. The next post from Publicola in my Google Reader is today's (July 22) Morning Fizz, which Google says was 10:10am. Publicola's site as of 9:06pm says this for today's Morning Fizz:
So that's the time lag for Google Reader to crawl Publicola, apparently. The other Publicola posts today have similar latencies:
So that's lag times of 1h 14m; 39m; and 1h 34m. Average: 69 minutes. I didn't sample all the rest but that's about right from the other two dozen-plus things I have on RSS tracking in Google Reader, that I've seen historically.
That's all I know. I just want this out since I feel like I'm semi in the middle here, or will imminently be possibly. All I did was forward an email of a WSDOT URL (a public URL on a server marked public access, I'd add) that I got off an old FOIA to a couple of journalists I like. At least one of them was already way ahead of me from what I found out later in the evening speaking to him briefly. I hope he'd get to write that up, because it's frankly dead interesting politics. I still say that depending on the ultimate outcome of all this, there's a book in it somewhere.
You all can infer whatever you want from my data. I don't want to be in the middle of any fight, or even possibly so.
More...
I sent (double checking my sent items) an email to Dominic yesterday at 3:38pm to confirm if he'd been able to get them, and giving them the URL I had received about 60 seconds earlier from a FOIA I'd filed a few weekends earlier--an FOIA I filed out of curiosity for the process of it, and that I figured I could kick the results of over to my journalist pals if it was worthwhile.
Since I'm (I think?) friendly and on good terms with both sides of these guys, and because I really wanted to make sure this got 'out' I sent an email exactly 9 minutes (3:47pm) later to Josh and Erica at Publicola with the same URL. Erica replied at 6:40pm asking me if it was the draft document set not slated for September/October. I replied after 10pm confirming it as I was busy till then.
As for time stamps, I just looked at my Google Reader, which has both Slog and Publicola. I know for a fact (from messing with time stamps on my own website before, because I'm a geek and all) that Google Reader caches the actual time that a post is first crawled from them approximately, unless something has changed in the past few months since I last paid attention to time stamps for something else. That is, if you post at 9:00am, and Google Reader crawls you at 10:00am, Google Reader will report the post at the crawl time. I think--this has been my experience before.
A screen shot of Erica's post is here:
http://www.joeszilagyi.com/images/Google…
It shows a 3:55 AM time stamp. The next post from Publicola in my Google Reader is today's (July 22) Morning Fizz, which Google says was 10:10am. Publicola's site as of 9:06pm says this for today's Morning Fizz:
"This Video Makes it Clear
By Morning Fizz, Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 8:56 AM"
So that's the time lag for Google Reader to crawl Publicola, apparently. The other Publicola posts today have similar latencies:
"State Rep: Overruns Provision Would Have Died if Chopp Hadn’t Pushed It", posted at 11:12 AM, Google Reader time of 11:51 AM.
"Let’s Give New Orleans Our Tunnel", posted at 1:10 PM, Google Reader time of 2:44 PM.
So that's lag times of 1h 14m; 39m; and 1h 34m. Average: 69 minutes. I didn't sample all the rest but that's about right from the other two dozen-plus things I have on RSS tracking in Google Reader, that I've seen historically.
That's all I know. I just want this out since I feel like I'm semi in the middle here, or will imminently be possibly. All I did was forward an email of a WSDOT URL (a public URL on a server marked public access, I'd add) that I got off an old FOIA to a couple of journalists I like. At least one of them was already way ahead of me from what I found out later in the evening speaking to him briefly. I hope he'd get to write that up, because it's frankly dead interesting politics. I still say that depending on the ultimate outcome of all this, there's a book in it somewhere.
You all can infer whatever you want from my data. I don't want to be in the middle of any fight, or even possibly so.
20
Because he basically just accused journalists at another local newspaper of plagiarism? It'd be sort of like if he published something accusing you of something -- say, being a child molester -- without actually calling you for an explanation first. It's pretty shoddy journalism.
Not that I don't find Erica totally insufferable, but really.
Dominic should have called PubliCola before filing this post.
Why should he have done so?
Because he basically just accused journalists at another local newspaper of plagiarism? It'd be sort of like if he published something accusing you of something -- say, being a child molester -- without actually calling you for an explanation first. It's pretty shoddy journalism.
Not that I don't find Erica totally insufferable, but really.
23
Notes: I wasn't going to even touch the time stamp thing until I noted a discrepancy. Hence the "I have no idea about the time stamps..." shifting, as I wrote this post and then looked a bit around. The Internet is a lot of things, but it's cached history doesn't lie, and if anyone doubts whether I know anything technical, I've been working on just about every variant of nerd from high-end ISP work to auditing web software to building, running and managing web servers in farms to servicing and working on enterprise-class VPNs and backup solutions, to screening tech hires, to web and even graphical design for web. If anyone doubts my light vanilla research, I suggest using Google or setting up your own RSS feed to test. My work at #19 is accurate as far as I am aware.
25
dominic was much better at fetching beers and burgers at the deluxe instead of pretending to be a journalist.
26
@24 Busy? If forwarding an email twice (4-6 mouse clicks total) and calling Dominic just after 545pmish for like 10 minutes is busy, sure.
27
The most interesting thing about this entire contretemps is the contortions my tongue has been going through to try and pronounce "Szilagyi."
For god's sake...
For god's sake...
28
@20:
As I read it, he accused them of back-dating their post, not of plagiarism.
Dominic should have called PubliCola before filing this post.
Why should he have done so?
Because he basically just accused journalists at another local newspaper of plagiarism?
As I read it, he accused them of back-dating their post, not of plagiarism.
29
I said you've been busy since you took the time to write a lengthy comment making clear the extent and limits of your involvement as background for your analysis of the technical issues involved, not omitting further background as to the extent and limits of your technical experience, etc., etc., etc. So: busy.
It's meant as a compliment which, while it's true I can't often agree with your plentiful opinions, it bears mentioning you did a nice thing here, so thanks.
It's meant as a compliment which, while it's true I can't often agree with your plentiful opinions, it bears mentioning you did a nice thing here, so thanks.
30
Jesus, what are you guys, a bunch of 5th graders? Dominic called Erica a booger snot, film at 11.
32
I wonder how this will be reported over at the Weekly.
Anyway, Holden is a tool, and Erica's desire for "scoops" has David Postman giving her shit in public.
You deserve each other.
Anyway, Holden is a tool, and Erica's desire for "scoops" has David Postman giving her shit in public.
You deserve each other.
34
Backdating a post could be a product of a lot of things, not just attempting to pretend to get a scoop (which I haven't seen Publicola claim anyway). For instance, they start working on the post. They accidentally hit publish, then realize they don't have the links in place, and unpublish it. With wordpress, the publish timestamp gets set right at first publish. Or it could be that they intended to schedule the publication for a certain time, then changed their mind, but the scheduled timestamp stuck. Or ...
I can think of all sorts of technical reasons why a timestamp could be not indicative of the actual publication time.
The pissing war between outlets over who was "first" is about as interesting as who posts "first" comment somewhere. Brag on who has the best coverage, not the fastest.
I can think of all sorts of technical reasons why a timestamp could be not indicative of the actual publication time.
The pissing war between outlets over who was "first" is about as interesting as who posts "first" comment somewhere. Brag on who has the best coverage, not the fastest.
35
I don't even see the point of messing with the timestamp on that post. It's literally just a batch of links to the EIS. If they were trying to get the drop on The Stranger, they chose a really strange post to do it with. Nobody reads an EIS for fun, so posting links to the PDFs for their readers is a lazy move to begin with. Hell, Dominic's post here drew more attention to the Publicola post than my RSS feed.
36
I LOVE THIS. Please continue this pissing match for as long as possible, it is way more entertaining than the actual politics.
My fav part is that this is, I believe, the very first time Slog has ever linked to or referenced the existence of Publicola.
Josh - Erica is sinking your ship. You're a good writer and a great analyst, why did you hitch your wagon to such a divisive psycho?
My fav part is that this is, I believe, the very first time Slog has ever linked to or referenced the existence of Publicola.
Josh - Erica is sinking your ship. You're a good writer and a great analyst, why did you hitch your wagon to such a divisive psycho?
37
I like the Stranger/Slog. Sometimes I also like PubliCola.
I find this petty backbiting between the two publications/blogs to be pretty juvenile.
Dominic, I'm glad you are on the tunnel story, and I'm glad you did a FOIA request on this EIS. But I don't give a shit at all if PubliCola also got ahold of this info, nor if they monkeyed with their timestamp. This post comes off as whiney and petty. It demeans you both.
I find this petty backbiting between the two publications/blogs to be pretty juvenile.
Dominic, I'm glad you are on the tunnel story, and I'm glad you did a FOIA request on this EIS. But I don't give a shit at all if PubliCola also got ahold of this info, nor if they monkeyed with their timestamp. This post comes off as whiney and petty. It demeans you both.
38
this is fucking stupid and you're a bunch of babies for even replying to their bullshit. who gives a fuck?
grow up. but goddamn i say that about 99% of what you write mr holden...
grow up. but goddamn i say that about 99% of what you write mr holden...
39
Enjoying all the useless fapping from bloggers, while the tunnel project just keeps on rolling along. Keep thinking you're actually making a difference, and we'll keep building a solution to the Mighty Pancake.
43
I happened to be browsing at Publicola last night, probably close to 5:30, and did indeed see that post. So if the argument is that it wasn't actually posted until this morning, you are mistaken. Good effort at smearing former co-workers though.
44
I blame the lack of caffeine this morning for my total mis-read of the dates on your post. While I still think it's petty to be arguing about something like this, I did not happen to see the original post about the tunnel findings, but the one posted just last night, detailing those findings. Apologies all around.
46
I am absolutely speechless.
Cage match? Dominic v. Erica?
Sorry, Dominic - I got my money on Erica.
Cage match? Dominic v. Erica?
Sorry, Dominic - I got my money on Erica.
49
Dominic Holden has the education and maturity level of a high school junior...He must have become stunted when he dropped out.
Dude, you too will be in need of a job after working for the Stranger. With no formal education and a resume of waiting tables, you shouldn't burn too many bridges around here.
Dude, you too will be in need of a job after working for the Stranger. With no formal education and a resume of waiting tables, you shouldn't burn too many bridges around here.
54
Aw, and I thought the Slog and 'cola could be friends.
Posted by Matt the Engineer on July 21, 2010 at 10:22am
Posted by Matt the Engineer on July 21, 2010 at 10:22am
55
@54 you are SO BUSTED! I have a VHS tape that shows in the background a Poloroid of a screenshot of someone mentioning in passing that you really posted that on July 23, 2010 at 10:23 AM.
BTW - Dom rules!
BTW - Dom rules!
56
Well, if you click the link to the publicola page, you will find it has now been removed. Holden for the win.
57
Imagine what you could accomplish if you directed the time you spent typing this post to reporting rather than a blog pissing contest. Nobody cares but you and Erica.
60
About time, Dan.
After all, if the Times can set loose their columnists to lie about the Tunnel ...
After all, if the Times can set loose their columnists to lie about the Tunnel ...
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