I remember one, maybe two years ago when a merger story would pop up on the radar screen for the week and it is was news. Not necessarily because the companies were large or the deal was for a lot of money but because mergers didn’t seem to happen every day and they were fun to write about.
Lately it seems not a week goes by that we aren’t writing about one company or another joining up. The deals almost evoke yawns at our editorial meetings. Not really, but they are becoming a bit ho hum. The big get bigger. (Note: I am fully aware it is these growing behemoths that ultimately pay my salary and for that I am very thankful.)
On the other hand, we also sit around-like most of the rest of the world-and try to imagine who might be next, which company might be interested in what other one and when and how a deal might come together. Its kind of a game. Large firms are steel vaults when it comes to this type of news. The stories are sure hard to crack.
I think it is hard for all the media-not just the trade press. With the continued infiltration of the Internet in our daily lives the news business becomes more competitive by the hour, and a strange phenomenon has developed I’ll call “reporting ala Lewinsky.”
More and more often we are getting word of these big deal stories by one news agency reporting that another news organization plans to write a story on the topic later in the month.
Huh?
First of all I don’t remember learning in journalism school that what is on the story roster of another publication constitutes news. Secondly, if a news organization were to get its hands on another organization’s story roster (Note: this would be completely unethical and honest journalists worth their salt and having any integrity at all would never want or need such information), would the paper really share it with the world or just quietly go ahead and write the same story the week before? Third, what kind of a Mickey Mouse news organization lets word of their prized news story leak to anyone before publication?
Some people find how and at what pace the communications world is changing baffling. I am right there with them.
As a journalist I am baffled at how some of us are handling ourselves in the midst of it all.
