Michael Jackson’s death caught news orgs flatfooted (but they moonwalked away with a good story)

 Posted by on 26 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 262009
 

Who broke the story on Michael Jackson’s death? TMZ. And it’s not just TMZ saying that — the L.A. Times acnowledges that the celeb-stalking site was first on the scene:

The gossip site once again left TV networks and other traditional media outlets scrambling in its wake, even as they attempted to distance themselves from a source widely regarded as salacious, if not disreputable.

Just after noon on Thursday, paramedics responded to a 911 call at Jackson’s Holmby Hills mansion. Less than an hour later, TMZ … landed the scoop that the multiplatinum pop singer had gone into cardiac arrest. At 2:44 p.m., it beat rivals by informing the world of his death, which occurred at 2:26 p.m.

How surprised were news organizations? The Washington Post didn’t even have a pre-written obit ready (that’s normally standard practice for newspapers, just in case):

About 7 p.m. Thursday evening, former Post managing editor Bob Kaiser wandered past the obits desk and asked, ever so innocently, “Any noteworthy deaths today?”

Kaiser, who has been at the Post since 1963, knows the gallows humor of newsrooms better than anyone, and of course he knew we were in full emergency mode. The first rumors that Michael Jackson had died surfaced around 5:30 — a good half-hour or more after our usual daily deadline.

Michael Jackson was 50 years old, with no known life-threatening health problems, and we had no advance obituary prepared. Adam Bernstein and I began an immediate crash course in all things Michael, as the editors scrambled to figure out how to handle the huge, unexpected story.

But before you start saying “Boy, those old newspapers are old, and the Internet’s where it’s at, baby,” consider that TMZ may have had the barebones, but for the details, the “heavy lifting” was done by established news orgs like the L.A. Times and the Associated Press. At least, so says the Chicago Tribune:

Gossip site TMZ.com … was out in front with Jackson news and digital-era pipelines spread the word, as has happened before with other major celebrity news stories. But it was old media stalwarts that did the heavy lifting, with giants such as The Associated Press and the Web site of the L.A. Times, sister paper of the Chicago Tribune, reporting the fastest, most credible information on the emergency call for paramedics and ultimately his death.

Adam Fendelman, founder and publisher of HollywoodChicago.com, an entertainment news site, was at a no-cell-phones-allowed screening of “Public Enemies” Thursday afternoon and missed the initial reports. When he left the screening and heard that TMZ had broken the story, his first response to his staff was: “Are we sure?”

“The Web and TV phenomenon that TMZ is is very good at fast-breaking and late-breaking news, but there’s an inherent problem with trust in the everyday consumer’s mind,” Fendelman said.

The Associated Press notes that:

So many people wanted to verify the early reports of Jackson’s death that the computers running Google’s news section interpreted the fusillade of “Michael Jackson” requests as an automated attack from about 5:40 p.m. through 6:15 p.m. As a defense mechanism, Google’s news section responded to requests for information about Michael Jackson with squiggly letters known as a “captcha.” Just as online ticket buyers regularly do to complete their purchases, the Michael Jackson searchers had to enter the letters correctly to see Google’s new results.

Now that’s the power of celebrity. But you know who I feel bad for in all of this? Farrah Fawcett.

(Kudos for some of the links from Jim Romenesko)

Grant Hamilton

  • Colin Corneau

    TMZ is owned by Time-Warner — one of those cob-webbed old-style conglomerates that all the blogkiddies hate so much.

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    Rather than getting into an “AOL Time Warner” snarkfest, I’ll just point out that your language betrays you here, Colin. Time Warner is indeed much more of a conglomerate than a media company (though it’s made up of media companies). It just bought TMZ, it didn’t come up with or create it.

    I would argue that none of the blogkiddies hate the companies, per se, they just love the internet, and have disdain for companies that aren’t rushing to embrace it.

    I’ll also go out on a limb and say that TMZ the website is probably supported financially by TMZ the television show. That’s just how the ad dollars flow.

    Believe me, if advertising on the internet was deep-pocketed enough that it could support old-style media behemoths without them dipping into moneys from print or broadcasting, the first people cheering would be the blogkiddies — because they want to sell ads, too.

  • Colin Corneau

    And you betray some interesting things, too — namely, that for al the hype around the ‘net, it just don’t pay. And the culture that saturates it — anarchic, bellowingly individualistic and entitlement-laden — can’t cover up the fact that no matter what medium you’re talking about, “you gets what you pays for.”

    Print, for all the razzing it takes and volumes of premature obituaries written about it, makes money. One could argue that it’s so good at making money that its mere survival after years of questionable management is all the proof you need, but that’s another story.

    CBC Radio had an interesting program on citizen journalism this morning – it was balanced and well-researched (that’s what you get with traditional, accountable media) and made very good points on either side.
    Personally, I trust citizen journalists about as much as I’d trust citizen surgeons. One thing I found interesting about TMZ in the aftermath of this celebu-avalanche is that it says it gets its facts “the old fashioned way – (they) dig for them.”
    The future is journalism that simply finds a way to blend the effective delivery of digital with the accountability and standards of traditional…anything else is cheap at best, dangerous at worst.