We discussed Matt Holiday’s puzzling trade to the A’s yesterday, but one angle went unnoticed – who had the story first? (We realize there is a large segment of people who could care less about this trivial media stuff. But that’s always been the primary focus of this blog, so go away, and come back in 30 minutes when the next post is up.)

Undeniably, the first to report the story was SI’s Jon Heyman. Fox’s Ken Rosenthal followed with a story, referencing that it was broken by SI. However, at that point, the deal was simply close to completion, and it was still unclear exactly who Colorado was getting. You know what happened next – in swooped the ESPN tandem of Cransick and Olney, reporting that it was a done deal. And then, the dagger: the Associated Press chased the story, giving credit to ESPN. This riled up more than a few baseball fans (and writers).

(MLB Trade Rumors did a terrific job chronicling this race. Heyman’s story went online at 1:27, Yahoo’s Tim Brown followed at 1:51, and then around 2 pm everyone had it.)

To the untrained eye, these “scoops” are meaningless. Perhaps they’re worth a pat on the back from a colleague, or bragging rights in the press box. In this economic climate, we can’t imagine writers getting bonuses for scoops. But here’s the flip side: If you’re living in Denver, and your paper didn’t have the Iverson trade first, or the Holliday deal first, where are you going to go for your national sports news? The places that break the news.

And this is why ESPN’s strong PR team is always making sure that they’re getting credit (or trying to) from the AP. Branding. Slowly but surely, as the years pass, the mind becomes trained – “where did I go first for my sports news?”

We find it strange that bloggers have grasped this concept – find an obscure story, blog about it, and then send it out to as many bloggers as possible – yet massive bureaucratic entities have not. If you’re at a newspaper and you’re about to break a significant story or trade or hiring or firing, how are you not immediately on the horn with your paper’s PR staff to send the story as wide as possible? This isn’t on the writers, necessarily, (they’re blogging and writing and working sources) but rather that paper/outlet’s leader to organize for blanket coverage.

There is nobody who does a better job of this than ESPN.