Dartblog

Yesterday, for the first time, blogospheric doings left me miffed. You all recall the Sandy Berger story, do you? Of course. The investigator’s office at the National Archives released a redacted form of the report on Mr. Berger’s filching to newsmedia, which meant that the document became public. For some reason, neither the media nor the investigator deigned to release the raw document, via the Internet, to the public. Dartblog acquired and posted the entire thing at 8:58 in the evening on Thursday, December 21.

(One of blogs’ most important functions is to disintermediate the old newsmedia, denying them the opportunity to withhold raw data and present their prose as the only source of that data.)

What annoyed me — again, just a little bit — is that Pajamas Media, at 10:35 in the morning on Friday, December 22, posted the full report as well, making its biggest ‘exclusive’ play to date. Pajamas e-mailed major online political writers, informing them of the scoop. And Pajamas reporter Richard Miniter wrote the preface to the document, whose flavor is this: “PJM is making public on this website for the first time the report by the Inspector General’s office…”

I had that document nearly a halfday earlier — an eon in Internet time. I know this is a silly thing to whine about. Making the document public, after all, is the important thing. Not who does it. Something is in there that caused The Washington Post and CNN not to upload the raw PDF to their respective websites. But count me a member, I suppose, of the old fashioned media: I want credit.

UPDATE: This post is not entirely accurate. The document uploaded here at Dartblog and at Pajamas Media are not identical. Both contain the Berger interview report, which is what made news, but Pajamas’ file contains additional materials as well. I did not, therefore, fully scoop Pajamas, and I owe Miniter, Simon, Johnson, and the rest an apology for the accusatory tone of this post. I’m sorry.