A Slice of Bacon

On Monday night, I, like a lot of NBA fans, were sitting around watching whatever they could watch to get them ready for the second half of the 2011 season. A pretty excellent All-Star game had just wrapped, and we get that lull day before action kicks off again. 

I spent the evening watching some college basketball, and that so happened to be on ESPN, when news broke that Carmelo Anthony was traded to the Knicks. 

That’s the news. ESPN broke into a boring Oklahoma State-Kansas game to give us the initial details, but that was it; ‘Melo to New York. The thing is, ESPN didn’t break the story. That attribution went to The Denver Post, the 13th most circulated newspaper in the United States, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (little ironic plug there). 

But where are people reading this news? Are they breaking the servers over at the Post, trying to get the latest from the company that broke it? No, of course not. Social media dorks like myself are discussing it on Twitter or Facebook, and occasionally hitting up Nuggets message boards to see the inevitable reaction from fans losing their star player (even if they really lost him six months ago). Regular sports fans might be hitting up the bigs like ESPN or Yahoo! Sports, while others will read the blogs and sites they love. But nobody cares who broke the story anymore. That’s what is so interesting about sites that break big news. 

Deadspin.com has made it in some larger publications (GQ and HBO Real Sports, to name a couple) because of some of the stories they’ve broke the last year or so, but it isn’t because they are breaking news, it’s because of the news they are breaking. They’re posting information about FAMOUS athletes being scandalous. It isn’t that Deadspin is breaking news, it’s that they’re breaking DIFFERENT news. But when it comes to big stories … big, regular, sports stories, it doesn’t matter what site or newspaper is breaking it. Right when the news hits the Internet, the attribution slowly fades, like a watercolor painting. Before long, nobody is talking about the Post breaking the story, because nobody really cares about it. 

It’s interesting because my first big writing gig came with a website that was up-and-coming. It was a sports blog turned sports site, and the money seemed to be endless for new writers. The catch? They wanted to break news. Bosses were OBSESSED with getting on ESPN’s bottom line. It was their main goal. Now? The site just got sold for pennies on the dollar in the Internet world, letting go of nearly all of their writing and editorial staff.  

Being the first to the party just isn’t that big of a deal anymore. The Denver Post broke this ‘Melo trade, and I’m sure that will be a big win for them in the newsroom, but it can’t be that big of a deal for the newspaper anymore. Tomorrow morning, nobody will remember who sent that out first. All they’ll care about is where to pre-order the Melo jersey in orange and blue, and who the Knicks first opponent will be when Carmelo straps on his Jumpmans.