Wow, Some Reporters Can Still Keep a Secret

By: Joe Strupp I was almost sure it wouldn?t last. When Jay Jostyn of the Christian Science Monitor called me a week ago to tell me the newspaper's big news, that the Monitor was cutting its daily publication to essentially go all-Web, I was glad to get the tip. Having this 100-year-old prestigious daily basically give up print for its online version was big news.

One caveat, though: The story would not break until the following Tuesday, Oct. 28. That meant having a handful of reporters keep the secret for almost a week. Yes, an embargo. That ugly word that every reporter has heard, and cringed at, was in place. Sure, we?ll honor it, I told him. But don?t expect to keep it a secret.

Asked who else was also being told about this groundbreaking news, Jostyn listed a group of respected major outlets, including The Associated Press. I knew most of them would keep the deal. But with the Internet a virtual whirling dervish of rumors, leaks, and non-journalistic operators, I figured this juicy bit of newspaper industry info would not stay secret until Tuesday.

?Mark my words,? I told Jostyn, ?This embargo will not last. Just watch, somewhere, somehow, it will get out.? In 20 years of reporting, and the past 10 at E&P, I had seen any number of embargos bulldozed by less than honorable reporters. And those involved much less-interesting news that the Monitor switching its key news delivery approach.

All it takes is for someone to tell someone, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and ... suddenly it's online.

As I pondered this lengthy waiting game, I recalled my days at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. There, I was among the first occupants in 1997 of the paper's newest bureau, located in neighboring San Bernardino County and competing regularly with the San Bernardino County Sun. Almost routinely, they broke embargos, and on the most basic things, such as government reports on health statistics or crime or any matter of bureaucratic data.

Most of that was pre-Internet, too. Today, something like the Monitor breaking new ground on the Web was surely not going to hold.

We had no intention, of course, of breaking the embargo. But we were bracing for the news to get out somewhere else. With that in mind, I went to meet with Jostyn and Monitor Editor John Yemma in Manhattan last Thursday. After a great interview during which we chatted about industry news and I took down all the facts and speculation about the Monitor giving up its five-day daily print paper for a weekly magazine and a daily Web report, I headed back to E&P, wrote up the story, and waited.

One last attempt to get some approval for an early report on the story, embargoed until this past Tuesday, I called Jostyn, offered my negative prediction again, and asked if we could release the story early. A polite "no" followed. I then asked for the specifics of the embargo. ?1:30 p.m., Tuesday,? he said. ?So does that mean newspapers can publish it in their Tuesday papers?? I asked. ?No,? Jostyn responded.

That convinced me that it would not hold. Someone would drop it online late Monday or put it in the Tuesday paper. With that, I finished the story, filed it in our own Web system, and headed out for the weekend. For the next few days, I could not help but check the Web, Googling ?Monitor? ?web? ?web-only? and such related topics in its news page. Nothing came up.

On Monday and Tuesday mornings, I did the same, expecting a story to pop up early Tuesday. Nothing happened; the story held. As we prepared our version to launch at the predetermined 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, I kept a watchful eye on several news outlets and, of course, Poynter.org?s Romenesko site. Still I found an empty nest.

Finally, our story launched at the appointed hour, 1:30 p.m. After a moment, I did a quick check of those I figured would also have the story, along with some Google news searches.

Little by little, they launched the story -- AP, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, all with the embargoed 1:30 time on their reports. In the end, the story, as we thought, was big news. But no one had broken the embargo. Apparently, not even by a few minutes.

So, at a time when some questionably ethical news sites are stealing audience from newspapers, cuts and buyouts are the rule, and news outlets are being pounded for alleged bias and credibility problems, there still appears to be some honor among thieves ? er ... reporters.

If a fairly big industry story can last almost a week in secret among major news outlets, maybe we are not all liberal, bias, lazy, cranky, and overly opinionated hacks.

OK, maybe we are. But at least we can still keep a secret.