The Los Angeles Times this morning had a story about how celeb-gossip site TMZ scooped other media on reporting Michael Jackson’s death.

Jackson’s time of death was 4:26 p.m. St. Louis time. At 4:44 p.m., TMZ reported that Jackson was dead. The Los Angeles Times didn’t report the death until 4:51 p.m., and the coroner’s office didn’t confirm it until 6:25 p.m.

A day later, the 7-minute lag might not seem like a big deal. But for those 7 minutes, TMZ owned the story. The word spread like wildfire via Twitter and email. Everyone knew Michael Jackson was dead, but the only confirmation came from a gossip website. The so-called mainstream media, like CNN and Fox, began reporting the death, but attributed it to “reports.” But they struggled with giving TMZ credit.

“That’s typical,” TMZ managing editor Harvey Levin told the LA Times. “No matter what they say, people know we broke the story. That’s how competitors handle it. There’s no issue about our credibility.”
At STLtoday, we first posted the story when Jackson entered the hospital with a direct link to the Los Angeles Times story.

We later changed to an Associated Press story.  When TMZ posted the word that Jackson was dead, we posted a direct link to TMZ saying, “TMZ reports Michael Jackson is dead.” However, that was only a link. The main headline on our page did not change until the Los Angeles Times reported Jackson’s death. At  that point, we changed our headline to say, “Reports: Michael Jackson is dead” and directly linked to the LA Times.

We ran with the TMZ Michael Jackson link because it would be news one of two ways: Either TMZ was scooping the world, or it would turn out that their reports of Michael Jackson’s death were greatly exaggerated.

We didn’t change our main headline until we had the word from established news organizations like the Los Angeles Times or the Associated Press.