Thread by @stjbs

Reader response. As I told @bigangrylaw (who I also like and whose work I appreciate), I started working on this piece months ago. I have no problem when readers don’t agree with a piece but I would like to address one point.

https://twitter.com/bigangrylaw/status/1517508252665274369

Frequently, I’ve worked on stories, only to discover some premise I’d been following was inaccurate. And that frequently, the explanation was far simpler.
…
Why did these stories come out the same day? Ive gotten several critiques of collusion/coordination, etc …

Y’all, I started working on this probably six months ago. At one point, I called @keribla to ask a piece of advice. In that conversation, I mentioned I was working on a story about Crimestoppers. And then she told me she was as well. …

I attended a crimestoppers meeting a few weeks later, only to run into @Fahrenthold, at which point I realized I was competing against my old frenemy and the best non-profit reporter in the country. Not a great feeling.

I continued my reporting, hearing every once in a while that the people I had contacted had also been contacted by our competitors. We didn’t know when they wanted to publish.

@Dexinvestigates and I worked on our pieces, which were supposed to publish this weekend and next. When we saw @keribla’s piece, we basically said “PUBLISH NOW!”
While we would have liked to own the scoop, we definitely weren’t going to let competitors take it.

And THAT is why yesterday happened like it did. Competition—not some grand evil plot. Like I said, the truth is often simpler… and dumber… than you might initially think.

Thanks for reading, y’all.

And if you guys think that I would ever let a competitor publish something before me, you guys are out of your minds 😂