Ken Rosenthal Detailed How Two Teenagers Scooped Him on the Billy Butler Contract
By Mike Cardillo
Tuesday night Billy Butler signed a three-year, $30 million contract with the Oakland Athletics. In terms of baseball off-season transactions it’s not the biggest news, despite making our site’s Jason Lisk sad (and searching for Billy’s BBQ sauce before its taken off shelves). The deal did seem to materialize rather quickly, causing some initial disbelief inside the baseball Twitter world.
The news was first reported by an account, @CoveringTheBases and then confirmed by @RobertMurryMLB. At first glance that’s nothing noteworthy until you realize the accounts are run by 13-year-old Devan Fink and 18-year-old Robert Murray, respectively. Baseball insider Ken Rosenthal acknowledged both scoops in tweets Tuesday night, after confirming their information independently.
Wednesday morning Rosenthal joined MLB Network’s Hot Stove show to discuss the Twitter acknowledgements coupled with breaking news and how it feels to be scooped by an eighth grader. If you’re interested in the inner-workings of media, it’s a segment worth watching and Rosenthal’s ability to have a little fun with the situation is refreshing. In short, in 2014 anyone can conceivably break news.
Rosenthal also explained why he credits other people’s scoops, delivering a subtle barb at the end:
Mostly, with so much information floating around, it comes down to a matter of establishing trust. When a reporter on the level of Rosenthal in baseball or Adam Schefter in the NFL or Adrain Wojnarowski for the NBA sends something out on social media, the reader takes it for being a fact. That sort of blanket trust takes time to build up and establish.
By the same token, last winter then-18-year old Chris Cotillo made news after breaking the Doug Fister trade to the Nationals when he was a relative unknown media entity. A year later, Cotillo — who writes for SB Nation — established that high level of trust in his reporting on transactions.
Thursday the pair of young writers were themselves on MLB Network:
[H/T HBT]