How does a reporter get a scoop? Nurturing contacts, wearing out shoe leather, poring over documents. And for some, the toolkit may include phone hacking, honeytraps and covert recording.

I remember hearing once that tabloids like the National Enquirer have some of the most robust fact-checking infrastructures, because the stakes and the likelihood of getting sued are so high. I don’t know how the British libel rules compare to the US, but check out what some of these reporters have done:

The exciting:

In 2003, Daily Mirror reporter Ryan Parry used false references to get a job as a footman in Buckingham Palace. His aim was to uncover security lapses at the Palace in the run-up to President George W Bush’s visit.

He revealed details of the President’s bedroom as well as the Queen’s breakfast habits. Eventually the Queen won a court order preventing the Mirror from revealing any more.

The worrying:

Tessa Mayes, who has worked as an investigative journalist for newspapers and TV shows, said… ‘If I had said no, I wouldn’t have got to work on those stories. It’s not unknown for journalists to sleep with their sources in order to meet a deadline. As it happens I haven’t needed or wanted to do that.’

The silly:

And it is widely claimed that in 1994 Rebekah Wade – then a News of the World reporter, now editor of the Sun – dressed as a cleaner and hid in a toilet for two hours in order to nab an early copy of the Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times, housed in the same building as the News of the World, was serialising a biography of Prince Charles, and NoTW editor Piers Morgan wanted to know what it said. John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times, is alleged to have shouted at Morgan: ‘Theft isn’t journalism.’

Read the whole thing.

The story, “Threat to Globe triggers flood of feelings” (yes I’ve run into horrible A1 headlines in the Globe before) comes off as narcissistic and self-important.

News that The New York Times Co. might shut down the biggest newspaper in New England if its unions don’t swiftly agree to $20 million in cuts sent a shockwave throughout Greater Boston, sparking an outcry from places as disparate as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Johnny’s Luncheonette in Newton Centre, and voices as varied as US Senator John F. Kerry and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. To some readers, such a loss seemed unimaginable, but others said the transformation from paper to the Internet is inevitable.

OK, that was rough but not too bad. But hey Globe reporters, what did citizens say to you when you asked them how important they think you are?

Losing the Globe is more than the shuttering of a company, readers said. It would be, they said, the loss of something essential to Massachusetts’ very sense of itself — and one of the few forces for public accountability in the region.

Heaven’s be!

They recalled articles exposing corruption and waste in government and other institutions, and stories giving voice to those who otherwise would have no power at all.

Surely some people disagreed? Yeah, but thankfully they’re idiots.

Critics of the Globe, especially in anonymous comments posted on the newspaper’s website, said the newspaper was falling victim not just to turbulent economic times but what they called its own “liberal bias,” though they did not provide specific examples. Some complained about ink stains; others about perfumed inserts in the newspaper. Still others raised deeper concerns about customer service.

After the jump the story becomes somewhat less exaggerated, with readers giving pretty much every argument for keeping the paper, from “I want a real paper,” to:

“Could you imagine our kids going through life not knowing what a paper is?” said…Suzanne [Locke], who teaches at a Cambridge private school.

I don’t quite understand her argument (without the Globe they wouldn’t know what a paper is?), but here’s the kicker:

Still, the Lockes admitted, they don’t get the paper every day. Mornings are consumed with getting the boys ready for school and rushing off to work, where Steven Locke reads Boston.com, the Globe website.

This one comes right at the end:

Peter Wolf, the front man for the J. Geils Band, said losing the Globe would destroy readers’ connection to the region.

Destroy connection to the region! Can we get a quote on that?

“I can’t say it starts my morning but it starts my afternoon and it’s an old friend,” [Wolf] said. “Unfortunately people don’t get the impact till after it’s done. And when it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”

Oh. Not quite the rending of the flesh I was expecting.

Now, I understand that it’s tough to hear your favorite hometown paper might be going under (especially if you work there). I know that if the Washington Post I’ve been reading for the past eight years were to be threatened, or if word that my childhood paper the Tampa Tribune was closing got out, I’d be disappointed.

But if either then ran a self-indulgent story like this on the front-page the next day, my eyes would roll out of my head. This could have passed as a column. It’s not the kind of thing to be bandying around as journalism when you’re about to go out of business.

I generally think the Globe is a great paper. I love The Big Picture, the Ideas section, and the Reporters’ Questions section of this page down on the right. I would really rather they not go out of business (though going online-only wouldn’t really affect me here in DC). However, they really need to check themselves next time they decide to run a story about how important they are.

****

Misaligned Richter scales: While the Globe reports that news of a possible closure “sent a shockwave throughout Greater Boston, sparking an outcry,” the Boston Herald reports sources saying the “dire message sent a shockwave through a newspaper that has been battered by bad news and decimated by layoffs.”

Turns out, to be a beat reporter you gotta be pretty friendly with those you cover to get the scoops. From the article:

“Just after the New Year, [the Loose Lips column] submitted a records request for all e-mails sent to Washington Post employees from high-level mayoral aides and communications staffers during 2007. Call it the Year of Scooping Effortlessly.”

Later

“About an hour after sending word of his politicking at the editorial board, Nakamura e-mailed [Fenty's communications director Carrie] Brooks again, this time asking for ‘an acceptable way for us to write a story that rules crew out’—indicating that he already had knowledge from the mayor’s office that Crew was out of the picture.”

The whole article is a good read and gives an interesting inside view of how journalists and their subjects co-exist in a city like DC.

The reason, I think, is that blogging is always something I can do tomorrow. Yesterday I played tennis instead of writing, for instance. After the third or fourth day after I’ve found a story I’m usually done with it, or something else has come up that I have to find links for to write about.

This, on the other hand, is a bizarre trainwreck of a column that I read on Sunday in the Post. I put off writing about it, and I’m glad I did.

Mostly because why.i.hate.dc and the DCist did most of my work for me.

The Post, via DCist,

“…ran it to provoke, but not to offend. I thought the parallel she drew
between fainting Obama followers and Beatlemania was an interesting frame
with which to analyze the Obama phenomenon. She went further, of course, to
draw broader conclusions about the state of her gender highlighting women’s
interest in Gray’s Anatomy and Eat, Pray, Love. “

Yeah, that part is the Post’s own Outlook editor, John Pomfret’s, justification of the column. And in case you haven’t read it, here are some quotes I’ve chosen seemingly at random:

“I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, ‘we women,’ of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. ”

or

“Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst — and, yes, stupidest — presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.”

later

“What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?”

Now, if you’re a female columnist (or male for that matter), and you decide you want to write the thoughts you’ve been feeling about how women aren’t as smart as men, could you please not frame it so…insiduously?

I mean, Hillary Clinton’s taken some cheap shots during her run for President, twice as many as either of the guys, and she’s taken it all with some humor. Saying that the problems with her campaign are because it’s being run in a stereotypically feminine is neither provable nor enlightening. In fact, I think it degrades the conversation.

But enough of this Clinton love. The “Second Super Tuesday” caucuses are being counted right now, so it may be curtains for Clinton.

Still, look out for my columns coming up in the Post, first on how Obama’s black campaign keeps making stereotypically black mistakes, second on McCain’s curmudgeonly old man campaign, and how I need to stop letting my dog poop in its yard or I may get the homeowner’s association called on me.

The latest doom-sayer is David Simon, producer for “The Wire” and former newspaperman. From the Washington Post this Sunday:

Isn’t the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium — isn’t an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or were we kidding ourselves? Was a newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds, comics and the latest sports scores?

He points to the shrinking coverage of local papers, the rise of celebrity and soft news, and declining circulations as evidence no one from the newsroom to the news reader cares about news anymore.

Really, though, people are more news-savvy than ever before. Sure, newspapers are going through a tough time, but that’s because their mindset’s all wrong.

Simon admits that “Newsprint itself is an anachronism,” but then suggests that newspapers could have fought the rise of the Internet:

But was there a moment before the deluge of the Internet when news organizations might have better protected themselves and their product? When they might have — as one, industry-wide — declared that their online advertising would be profitable, that their websites would, in fact, charge for providing a rare and worthy service?

The Internet isn’t something newspapers should be fighting, or something they missed their chance to quash. Also, however, a newspaper’s website is not equal to the print edition. A newspaper’s website is the newspaper. The print edition is a luxury. Why doesn’t anyone understand this?

Yes, there are still questions concerning how to monetize the website, but technology will help us there. There are no lack of companies trying to figure out easier and more lucrative ways to get money from web surfers.

I give it 30 years before the New York Times goes web-only. By 2018 the print edition will be a quaint artifact mainly for old people and Luddites, like rotary phones or Polaroid cameras. After all, why buy a paper newspaper when I can just read the paper from my cellphone? Also, aren’t those things made from trees?

P.S.: I hear “The Wire” is awesome, I really want to start watching it.