Reporting on Podcasts

KOMU caught some heat this week for reporting on an ESPN "Insider" podcast that stated the University of Missouri was going to join the Big Ten Conference. I really think the report was solid, although I would have added to the story on KOMU.com that the source was the podcast. I also still haven't been able to listen to the sourced podcast to confirm what was said because it requires an ESPN subscription.

But today, I checked rockmnation.com again, a site that disputed KOMU's report on Thursday. In this post, they cite a reader who apparently has knowledge of the podcast in the box under "Update 2." This reader reports that ESPN's Bruce Feldman did report that Missouri to the Big Ten is a "done deal." ESPN's Scott Van Pelt read an e-mail from Feldman which had these words, according to this reader.

So, it seems KOMU's report is accurate, as long as the reader of rockmnation.com is accurate. In this case, there is nothing wrong with KOMU's report. In fact, I think this should be investigated further and reported on in more detail.

Some other Web sites attacked KOMU for lack of transparency after this story, but I think the transparency did come out via Twitter. The @KOMUNews account linked to the Insider podcast, which was really all you needed to hear (as long as what was reported as said was said in that podcast).

As long as news organizations have this transparency, then there's no fault to them as long as what they are sourcing is factual. I like the initiative in using these new media tools (podcasts, Web sites) to report the news as long as they are done with the same journalistic principles applied to any other story.