B2B blogger scoops world on Biden pick

I'm feeling a wee bit proud today. Heck, I think everyone in B2B journalism should be feeling a little proud today. Particularly those of us who live and work in the B2B blogosphere.
As Adam Tinworth has pointed out, perhaps the biggest news story on earth last week was broken by a B2B blogger.
According to Adam, Reed Business Information's Flightblogger was the first with the news that Barak Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. And he broke the news through Twitter and with the help of his readers. If that's not an example of how to report in 2008 -- fast, first, connected, Web-first and employing tweets and crowdsourcing -- I don't know what is.

Now according to Adam, others in the blogosphere picked up the story and ran with it. And, according to Flightblogger Jon Ostrower,  other bloggers, as well as the news networks, failed to credit him for the scoop.

It's worth noting that if, in fact, Jon was the first with the news (on 8/22 at 5:33 pm and 8:03 pm), then he only has himself to blame for not getting more attention. His posts are, well, sort of vague. Even he uses the word "speculation" to describe his findings. More importantly, he buries the lede. The "news" is at the bottom of continually updated post. And you have to read pretty closely to see that he's actually on to something important. Even the headline is lackluster -- "Presidential Picks and Planes." His tweets are no better. At 8:22 pm he writes that he "may" have the story: "NetJets 863 MDW-ILG may point to Biden as Obama VP. Look for a return flight."

But I don't want to get all nitpicky here. It looks like Jon broke the news. And that's worth celebrating if you care about news and B2B.

Jon's scoop is particularly good news if you're me.
Because several years ago I had the pleasure of speaking to a bunch of RBI journalists about "becoming more blog-like" -- by adopting some of the practices of the blogosphere in their work. I think it's safe to say that the reaction I received from some of the staff was a wee bit short of love and adulation. In particular, I remember one guy who promised me "we will never do that s*#t here."
And today I can say for sure that I was right when I responded, "Yes you will."

For a different take on this subject, check out the strange coverage from L.A. Times, which missed Jon's work, fails to credit anyone in the blogosphere, and instead seems gleeful that Obama's text-notification system failed. Or check out this piece from a student journalist who is positively disgusted by CNN's apparent lack of original reporting on the Biden pick.

(Note: B2B blog historians, if there are such people, may be amused to see that the first time I wrote about B2B blogs and the airline industry was three years ago this summer. I guess that means its probably time to drop the modifier "new" from the phrase "new media.")

Hat tip to Kristine Lowe, the newest B2B blogger on my radar screen. Although I subscribe to Adam's feed, and although I look at Flightblogger from time to time, I'm days behind in my reading and was unaware of Jon's scoop until I read about it on Kristine's blog. (Anyone who knows me and my enormous ego will guess correctly that I stumbled upon Kristine's blog because she linked to me and mentioned me by name. That triggered a Google alert in my in-box this morning.)

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media