Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
How a titan of 20th-century journalism transformed the AP — and the news
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
April 20, 2009, 3:37 p.m.

New York Times wins Pulitzer for Spitzer coverage that evolved online

Back in the day — you know, five years ago — when a big news story had been written, edited, fact-checked, vetted, proofread, and anguished over one last time, an adrenaline-pumped editor would cry out, “Run it!” As in, the presses.

When The New York Times was ready to report that Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York, had been implicated in a prostitution ring, managing editor Jill Abramson yelled 20 feet across the newsroom, “O.K., hit it!” As in, the button to publish the story on NYTimes.com.

The Times’ coverage of Spitzer, which just won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, hit the web shortly after 2 p.m. on March 10, 2008. (Two minutes later, I instant-messaged a friend with a link to the article: “SPITZER HUH?!?!?!?!”)

Releasing the news in the middle of the afternoon meant the Times couldn’t control the story, but they certainly owned it, instantly becoming the go-to source for reliable Spitzer news. The Times website crashed several times that day before the servers were rejiggered to handle the crush of traffic.

The Times’ lede and headline initially reported, somewhat obliquely, that Spitzer had been “linked to a prostitution ring.” As two editors later explained, they added details about the precise nature of Spitzer’s “link” to prostitution as more reporting was conducted over the afternoon. Obsessive readers, of which there were millions, could watch the story evolve on the Times website — almost as good as actually being there to hear Abramson yell, “hit it!” That sort of transparent rewrite is why the Times’ Spitzer coverage, though lacking in multimedia bells and whistles, should be considered an online-native story.

POSTED     April 20, 2009, 3:37 p.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
How a titan of 20th-century journalism transformed the AP — and the news
“If one man fails to file a story of a millionairess marrying a poor factory hand because that man understands such a story is not properly A.P. stuff, such an error of news judgment ought to be generally made known to other employees.”
The New York Times launches a free, geo-targeted extreme weather newsletter
Readers can opt in to receive morning emails explaining the level and type of extreme weather risk in up to four different places. The newsletter is free for everyone, not just subscribers.
Gannett journalists across the U.S. will strike on June 5
Gannett has around 200 newsrooms, and editorial employees at around two dozen of those will go on strike.