Does the Press Work Weekends Anymore?

Have you noticed that lately when major industry news breaks over the weekend it gets a tremendous amount of buzz on blogs, but it doesn't hit the press with any gusto until Monday morning - even online? What happened to having skeleton weekend/standby crews?

Mary Hodder's post on Bloglines and Ask Jeeves tying the knot has already generated more than 126 in-bound links. Meanwhile, the mainstream press have barely noticed this important development. There are some exceptions, however. At least three major news organizations chose to note the Bloglines/Ask story on their weblogs - BusinessWeek, the San Jose Mercury News and eSchool News. Everyone else is out to lunch. This episode typifies today's Long Tail news cycle.

Comments

[Michael Bazeley]

Most "skeleton'' weekend crews at papers are on the Metro side, not business. At the Merc, anyway, the Sunday and Monday business sections are printed ahead of time and can't take breaking news over the weekend, and the staffing reflects that. Of course, online is another animal entirely. Regardless, since the Bloglines news is still a rumor - I've not heard official word from either company, yet - it's hard to write a news story in the way we normally would.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Journalists have a higher threshold than bloggers. Bloggers can print up rumours and hearsay ... well, at least for now, before the libel lawsuits come raining down (check out my blog on Tuesday).

Journalists do print up rumours, but of the Website posting the rumour. Remember all the Kerry had an affair stories, but were more on that Drudge had such a story? It was the sleazy loophole for mainstream media to take to write up rumours.

I, for one, will wait for the official announcement from Ask.com. Since they are a public company, does this leak need to be investigated by the SEC? How many people bought Ask.com this weekend, or today, in anticipation of this announcement?