Paul Douglas Scoopology: CJ vs Paul Schmelzer vs Timestamps
The Paul Douglas fall-out continues. But now it has nothing to do with Douglas and has degraded to public jabbing between local columnists.
Apparently, Paul Schmelzer of the Minnesota Monitor thought it was odd that CJ claimed to have the scoop on the Douglas departure, so he thought he may have been the first to break the news on Douglas’ departure from WCCO, but he thought CJ may have scooped him and sent her an email to confirm:
It turns out that CJ was pretty darn confident that she scooped Schmelzer and took offense at Schmelzer’s email. You can read how that turned out at MinnMonn.
Schmelzer mentions in his email to CJ that he went live with his article at 2:45pm. He thought that was pretty good, but I have news for Paul: I had already edited Douglas’ Wikipedia page by then:
18:55 GMT is 1:55pm, so 50 minutes before Schmelzer’s story was published.
And I Twittered a minute before that:
Sorry, Schmelzer, but you weren’t even close. UPDATE: (But it also doesn’t seem like you particularly care, unlike CJ.)
But while Schmelzer wasn’t sure if he may have been first, CJ seems confident that she was. Unfortunately for her, the facts don’t seem to support her claims.
Below is a screenshot of the edit I made to Wikipedia that went live at 1:50pm:
See the URL in there? That’s a link to Bob Collins’ Newscuts blog on MPR where he went live with the news at 1:12pm.
Sounds like CJ was 18 minutes behind Bob Collins since CJ’s email to Paul Schmelzer says she, “Broke it around 1:30.”
And how did I find out? From Aaron Landry via IM.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Served Wiki-style!
April 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Your Twitter finishing move would make Sub-Zero jelous.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am
…and I heard from Bob Collins’ blog. The post he made was changed though and he didn’t indicate that it was changed (someone should tell him about the strikeout tag). The original post was:
April 10th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I know you won’t believe this — me being a stupid mainstream guy, dumb as a box of rocks, who doesn’t even Twitter. (g) — but I do know about the “strike” tag. But to be honest with you, I only care about what information is available now and what’s being presented now, not that which is no longer valid. The only purpose the strike tag really serves is — in my opinion, and I realize that gets me tossed out of the “you don’t blog right” club — to acknowledge a change in the facts (i.e. admitting a mistake) or to make a funny joke (i.e. Lileks) or if you’re the Revisor of Statutes for the state of Minnesota.
The rest just fuels debates about who had what first, and really in the big scheme of things, how important is that?
Actually, by the way, the original post ended at “More to come).”
And don’t forget as the world powers come together to discuss this very important issue, that time stamps can be changed. It’s unbelievable that some stupid blogging rube like me would know that, ain’t it?
April 10th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Ed is scooptastic!!!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Bob,
that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heardthanks for sharingthat’s brilliant.April 10th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Shoot. I take from that you’re not going to teach me the bloggers’ handshake.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
hahahahahahaha
April 10th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Aw man, if I had this scoop, I’d put it on my mantle… Yeah, I was way behind the curve on this one, as I too heard about it from Aaron’s tweet. Of course, my intention with the email was to go through non-techy and presumably private channels to figure it out. I figured I didn’t break anything, but didn’t count on CJ’s call announcing she’d out me in her next column. (There was no mention in today’s piece; maybe my preemptive move worked… or maybe she’s saving it for Sunday’s big-circulation day.)
April 10th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
This is great!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Do you ever sleep?