Yahoo gets scoop, credits MLB Trade Rumors
The all-star game is concluded, and you know what that means — my two day break from fantasy baseball is officially over. So I head over to my fantasy league page to set my lineup for the next few days, and see if Sean has responded to my latest trade offer (he hasn’t). And what do I find? A Yahoo Sports bulletin alerting me to the latest Pedro Martinez news:
Martinez passed his physical, and a deal is expected to be reached soon with the Phillies, MLBtraderumors.com reports.
A bell goes off. I used to write for MLB Trade Rumors, as did most of the contributors to this site, and I know that MLBTR doesn’t often do reporting. MLBTR writers watch their RSS feeds like hawks and post links to stories that real reporters write. Most of their material comes from the Ken Rosenthals, Buster Olneys, and Tony Massarottis of the world. So a site like Yahoo should seldom cite MLBTR as a source.
I go over to MLBTR to see who their source was. Here’s what I find:
4:41pm: Pedro Martinez passed his physical with the Phillies and is expected to sign a deal with the defending World Champions soon, according to Yahoo’s Gordon Edes.
Yahoo is giving credit to MLBTR for a news report, when their own reporter is the one with the scoop! I’m not sure what this says about sports journalism, or about MLBTR’s popularity. I’m sure it says something. But it’s late and I’ve had a couple of beers. So I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusion.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:59 am
I think it means Gordon Edes just wrote someone an angry email.
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