This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss iterative journalism, security through obscurity, Pornhub abandoning Texas and the TikTok ban.
JASON: One thing about journalism, if you stick to a beat and you cover the news, is that you end up writing the same article over and over again. Long ago (six months ago), when I was a manager/editor, this was one of my biggest pet peeves with writers. Some people do not like writing the same story over and over again. But it is simply the nature of the world, politics, technology, events, etc that not everything that happens is “new.” History repeats itself, etc.
The most extreme and best take on this phenomenon is a 2015 post by Polly Mosendz, a good journalist who was working at Bloomberg at the time. Her article was about the fact that she was repeatedly covering mass shootings, which all had a similar pattern:
“I have a mass shooting story prewritten at all times, ready to be filled in with details as needed. Such shootings happen about once a month and we need to be prepared. This is my prewritten mass shooting story:
‘A mass shooting has been reported at TK, where TK people are believed to be dead and TK more are injured, according to TK police department. The gunman has/hasn’t been apprehended. None of those involved have been identified.’”
Then comes the identification of the shooter, the calls for thoughts and prayers, the political backlash against this, and then everything goes back to “normal.”