Thursday, June 01, 2006

When is a 'jumper' not a jumper?



That would seem to be a question for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Here was the headline off Yahoo news earlier today as spotted by one of the alert CSJ Go Team members: Woman jumps from car on West Seattle Bridge.

But that's not what the story said:
As noted in this version, the call originally had gone out as a woman who had jumped:

So we're left with some questions. Was it a case of sensationalism? Of someone being a bit overeager on the Web desk? Of not keeping up with changing developments? Or did something get lost in translation between the P-I and Yahoo? I'm interested because this highlights another editing challenge for "print" newsrooms that now must think in terms of minutes, not hours. All the parts have to work together and in a system that is now (if you'll allow me to go academic for a second) asynchronous, far different than the workflows newspaper newsrooms have been accustomed to (but very similar to what we have explored at Newsplex).

At the least, it's embarrassing. At the worst, it's potentially defamatory.

So, anyone on the West Coast want to weigh in with insider knowledge?

By this evening, all had been straightened out on the P-I's site:

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