The balancing act of covering the media industry

New York Times reporter Ben Mullin spoke with Josh Ocampo about how he covers the media industry.

Here is an excerpt:

What’s challenging about your beat?

The media beat tends to be porous, unlike covering national security, for example. Information is less likely to stay concealed for a long period of time, so finding information and making it public as quickly as you can is one challenge.

There are some stories that do stay secret for a really long time. The Business desk recently published a story about the drama behind the Disney succession process. I think one of the reasons some of that stayed secret for so long was because some of that information was closely held by few people.

There are other media stories that are open secrets but are tough to get published, like the Harvey Weinstein accusations, which my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke. I think many people were peripherally aware that Harvey Weinstein was abusing women. But actually codifying the story and getting it published was another matter. Tapping into those different rungs of information, and figuring out what needs more time to simmer, is a balancing act.

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