We often talk about the new news ecosystem — the network of traditional outlets, new startups, nonprofits, and individuals who are creating and filtering the news. But how is the work of reporting divvied up among the members of that ecosystem?
By Jonathan Stray
Feb 24
To try to build a datapoint on that question, I chose a single big story and read every single version listed on Google News to see who was doing the work. Out of the 121 distinct versions of last week's story about tracing Google's recent attackers to two schools in China, 13 (11 percent) included at least some original reporting. And just seven organizations (six percent) really got the full story independently.
But as usual, things are a little more subtle than that. I chose the Google-China story because it's complex, international, sensitive, and important. It's the sort of big story that requires substantial investigative effort, perhaps including inside sources and foreign-language reporting. Call it a stress test for our reporting infrastructure, a real-life worst case. The New York Times broke the story last Thursday, writing that unnamed sources involved in the investigation of last year's hacking of a number of American companies had traced the attacks to a prestigious technical university and a vocational college in mainland China.
When I started investigating the issue on Monday morning, Google News showed 800 different reports. But how many of these reports actually brought new information to light? By default, Google does not display duplicate copies of syndicated (or stolen) content, bringing the total down to more than 100 unique pieces of copy. I read each one, and several hours later, I had a spreadsheet recording the sourcing for each story. An excerpt of this data is reproduced in the table below.
Here's what I found:
— Out of 121 unique stories, 13 (11 percent) contained some amount of original reporting. I counted a story as containing original reporting if it included at least an original quote. From there, things get fuzzy. Several reports, especially the more technical ones, also brought in information from obscure blogs. In some sense they didn't publish anything new, but I can't help feeling that these outlets were doing something worthwhile even so. Meanwhile, many newsrooms diligently called up the Chinese schools to hear exactly the same denial, which may not be adding much value.
— Only seven stories (six percent) were primarily based on original reporting. These were produced by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Tech News World, Bloomberg, Xinhua (China), and the Global Times (China).
— Of the 13 stories with original reporting, eight were produced by outlets that primarily publish on paper, four were produced by wire services, and one was produced by a primarily online outlet. For this story, the news really does come from newspapers.
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