Biz journalism yawns at Gawker expose of Bain documents

Foster Kamer of the New York Observer writes about the shrugging of shoulders from the business journalism world after Gawker scooped it by posting hundreds of pages of Bain Capital documents on Thursday about its investments and presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who once worked for Bain.

Kamer writes, “Of course, there was some pushback. One hour and 38 minutes after Gawker published the data, Business Insider’s Joe Wiesenthal predictably registered his boredom, but far more interesting was that Dan Primack over at Fortune—in less time—rendered his opinion (“worthless“) in a piece that closed with the words “Gawker has posted tons of smoke without any fire.”

“Its opener is far more telling:

Let me save you some time: There is nothing in there that will inform your opinion of Mitt Romney.

How do I know? Because I saw many of the exact same documents months ago, after requesting them from a Bain Capital investor. What I quickly learned was that there was little of interest …

“Mr. Primack caught an assortment of flack for it (especially from Heidi Moore), and he’s now backed himself into an unsavory position where he finds himself answering questions from Mr. Cook about his own sourcing. Besides the totality of the “Bad Look, Sour Grapes Flavor” on display here, it serves to further demonstrate a level of remove on the part of journalists who regularly come into ostensibly unsurprising information that would otherwise be relevant if not downright compelling to people who don’t regularly come into contact with that kind of information. In other words: to the public, the entire reason for the existence of a fourth estate.”

Read more here.