In the race against the clock — and against other news sites, bloggers and the all the other people who publish to Twitter and Facebook — we're always trying to be the first to break a story.
Mistakes happen, like the early reporting of Joe Paterno's death Saturday night, and we're reminded that accuracy is so much more important than beating our competitors by minutes and seconds.
We can't promise we'll never make a mistake, but this is one we hope to never make. What we can promise is that we'll do our best to get it right.
When Ted Koppel visited campus two years ago, the veteran broadcast journalist described our frenzy as a rat race with a bunch of reporters watching a big screen, tracking who broke the story five minutes ago, two minutes ago, one minute ago.
Walter Cronkite, who was part of the news agency United Press, a training ground for young journalists, set the standard with simple words of wisdom: "Get it first, but first, get it right."
The mistakes of CBS and Onward State, an independent student publication at Pennsylvania State University, of course, came from being too eager to publish. They jumped on a band wagon. Their justification wasn't that they had double-checked the facts, but that other people had published it, so that made it OK.
It's much like the stubborn teenager, really: But Mom, everybody else is doing it.
That line doesn't work for us. But there's another phrase we'll take to heart, something that was written in editor Mike Royko's office at the City News Bureau in Chicago: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
Getting it right and checking everything are elementary rules that can't be forgotten, even as the news cycle is changing.
The news never stops and neither does our coverage. But sometimes, it's worth taking a breather, and giving someone else the dignity of a few more hours.
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