(Screen Grab of Huffington Post correction. But will there be any consequences that prevent a repeat?)
SEO Journalism fails again.
Last night a student website prematurely announced former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died, leading one veritable news organization and also the Huffington Post to erroneously publish his obituary. They wanted to be first, so fact checking didn’t seem to matter. Most shamefully of all, neither outlet sourced their information to the student site until it turned out to be wrong. Really guys?!?! At least give credit where credit is due if you can’t even pick up a phone to do your own reporting.
So the false news goes viral.
JoePa died early this morning, according to the family (linking to AP here, because they did the right thing and waited). Sadly though, the family had to spend part of JoePa’s last night on earth refuting the greatly exaggerated news of his death.
For an excellent play-by-play of what went wrong and how truth spiraled out of control in a near repeat of the Gabby Gifford’s false death reports, please read Jeff Sonderman’s post at Poynter. It includes a great quote from the AP wagging a finger at CBS (the veritable news organization) and HuffPo for not basing their editorial decisions on “actual reporting.”
The managing editor of the Penn State student website, Onward State, resigned almost instantly. It’s obviously easier for a college senior to step down than a professional website editor but let’s give the kid credit. And ask: what should the penalty to CBS and HuffPo be? Both are actually getting even more traffic because of the error than they would otherwise as this media debate generates extra link juice that puts their obits to the top Google search for ‘Joe Paterno Dead’ and similar queries.
CBS has a built in disincentive to repeat, but HuffPo doesn’t. This flub stings the CBS brand of veritable news outlet, just as NPR was tarnished with the Giffords error. The Huffington Post on the other hand just gets more traffic. Being first is their business model. Standard journalism practice is incompatible with that goal as they practice it, especially with a lean staff. Independently confirming all reports, and verifying sources as the AP did, would stop them from being first so often.
This is not a lone error. It is an inevitable output of the Huffington Post business model, and this time CBS fell victim in a race to the bottom on HuffPo’s turf. So did their readers and the Paterno family.
Race to be first, sure, just as newspapers have always done. But do it based on your own reporting, or at the very least with attribution otherwise your “win” is on false premises and stealing clicks to boot.
Under the speed post strategy, error is inevitable, and therefore acceptable. That’s what has to stop, but it won’t so long as first wins search, and search drives traffic, and traffic, even ill-gotten, serves ads.
SEO journalism, after all, isn’t about accuracy.
