Yesterday was insane.  Not because of any crazy things that actually happened, since so few did, but because of all the things that were rumored to happen that the public found out about.  Yes, Brian Bruney went to the Nationals, and Pudge Rodriguez did as well, which definitely improves that club.  But as one front office guy from the Nats told me, “there is only one direction for this club to go.”

Yesterday was crazy for two reasons. The first is all the technology that allows rumors to get out before they have been proven to be any more than someone else’s hunch.  The second was that those that read the beat reporters have a real forum for spreading the rumors quickly- since they too are creating content and they want folks to read the content.

Here’s the thing that most good journalists will tell you.  It isn’t the truth unless you have a source on record, or you have several (read 2+) who will confirm in their own words.  A rumor posted on twitter is not a source, especially when the word “Rumor” is the lead.

Someone once told me that Twitter is like the cocktail party, where you overhear many different conversations, and perhaps decide on which one to join.  Its very much like the lobby at the Marriott for the Winter Meetings as well.  You wander through, and folks are guessing about what is being discussed between scouts and GM’s.  Sometimes you hear something that is true, and sometimes you hear a ‘what-if.’   Yesterday, a lot of the what-ifs were shared via twitter.  If you just listened to the beat writers, who were trying to give a sense of how things move through the lobby, than you got that cocktail party sense.  But if you were listening to everyone, you got the sense that everything was happening.

Its hard in 140 characters or less to set a scene, and to describe your point of view.  Its even harder since that tweet drops down to the bottom of the screen every few minutes.    But everyone who is passing along news needs to be careful.  The creation of quality content is reliant on their own integrity and knowing the content is indeed quality.

If folks are consistently putting out content that is not accurate, then you need to stop repeating that content.  You need to stop following them.  In 2009, the writers’ success is measured by how far their content travels in a short period of time.  Its in their best interest to be first with salacious news.  Its not in the best interest of those taking their content and reusing it again.  Source the material.  If its coming from one person with no name attributed, then wait for the second source.  Deep Throat was not someone standing around in a lobby, I guarantee you that.

Pat Burrell had a heck of a day yesterday.  He was traded to the Cubs, and then to the Mets in a matter of minutes, in the virtual world.  About an hour later, Edwin Jackson became a Met as well- though that piece of news came with the word “rumor” in front of it.  In New York there are 7 newspapers all who are told to come back with “the story” and to trump their counterparts.  How much their content is re-used (with attribution) is part of how they “win” at this game.

Each of us smaller entities has to be careful at finding our way in how we use that information.  It doesn’t do anyone any good if we follow a lead that ends up down a dead-end path.  Journalists succeeded for a very long time by using the rules of sourcing.  No matter how fast us gun-slinging bloggers are, we don’t help ourselves in any way, if we don’t hold ourselves to those same high standards.