What happens when a newspaper gets beat on a juicy story? Sloppy, catch-up journalism.
I originally thought this story was only a web update. Surely that must be the reason for the lack of details and, more importantly, sources. But even web updates must be sourced. Surely it wouldn't have been too hard to match the "according to a jail booking report" that appears in the Morning News story. But the Daily Record story was in today's paper, one day after the Morning News account. This now appears every bit as bad as the television news stories blatantly ripped off from the morning print editions.
While the newspaper industry is in the midst of a revolution, it is not the time for journalists or editors (as the case may be) to abandon the standards of responsible journalism in order to give unsourced information more quickly.
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