The Journalistic Hat Tip

[Bob Kohm]

Has anyone else noticed this happening more and more over the past year or so? It seems that much of the time reporters on the social media outlets are patting each other on the back and reporting who had a story first as if their audience is keeping score. Who really cares when just about every news story breaks pretty much simultaneously as a result of that same social media? Maybe on something that required some work-- running down a rumour, actually investigating a story to find something worthwhile-- I can see the impulse to give credit but when I get 8 tweets on a trade or an injury with everyone giving someone credit for "breaking" the story it starts looking like a journalistic circle jerk.

[Steve]

Journalistic Hat Tip would be a good name for rock band. Journalistic Circle Jerk would be a good name for a punk band.

[Moonlight J]

It is mainly a backlash at ESPN who never sources anything to anyone but their own sources who most of the time are just reporting what someone else has put out there already.

My biggest pet peeve on social media are people who pass stories along as sole sources trying to make themselves into something they are not. What I'd like to see is instead of

"Chris Perez out 4-6 weeks as 1st reported by @MLBastian" from someone like Rosenthal, I'd prefer to see "Now that Perez is out 4-6 weeks (link to original tweet), the Indians are likely going to go to Pestano for saves"

[Judge Jude]

"Maybe on something that required some work-- running down a rumour, actually investigating a story to find something worthwhile-- I can see the impulse to give credit"

That's when I see credit given, actually.
But I understand that it's a bit 'inside baseball' for the casual fan.
I like the idea of the simple link, though

[Don Quixote]

Has anyone else noticed this happening more and more over the past year or so? It seems that much of the time reporters on the social media outlets are patting each other on the back and reporting who had a story first as if their audience is keeping score. Who really cares when just about every news story breaks pretty much simultaneously as a result of that same social media? Maybe on something that required some work-- running down a rumour, actually investigating a story to find something worthwhile-- I can see the impulse to give credit but when I get 8 tweets on a trade or an injury with everyone giving someone credit for "breaking" the story it starts looking like a journalistic circle jerk.

It's not as if those guys and gals can get laid, so they practice the circle jerk instead.

Seriously--I think a lot of so-called journalists have been caught proclaiming themselves "first!" when all they'd done was quickly rewrite someone else's work. This circle-jerk of attribution is an overreaction to that--"I don't want to get caught acting as if I'm first when I'm not", a level of caution normally reserved for lawyers and similar species.

Moonlight is correct about ESPN. No matter the story, it's always "ESPN's [fill in the blank] reports that...", which, while technically true, falsely implies that the "reporter" in question broke the story.