How a blogger scooped everyone on the Lehman story

Glynnis MacNicol of FishbowlNY interviewed Dealbreaker’s John Carney about how the blog beat everyone last week on the Lehman Brothers story — and other news.

Here is an excerpt:

We mentioned last week how Dealbreaker beat the MSM to the initial Lehman Bros. story, but this happened more than once as the week progressed, yes?

Yes. First, we scooped everyone with the story that the Fed and Treasury were working on the Lehman problem. The Washington Post reported this story five hours later. Second, we were first, I believe, to report that there would be no government funding for a Lehman rescue. Third, not quite reporting, the we did explore the possibility of there being no deal to rescue or acquire Lehman on Friday, when everyone was still assuming the deal would happen.

So, other than the coffee man, how did you do it?

We’ve built a network of readers at both the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and on Wall Street. Basically, these readers have come to trust us to provide information to them quickly. It’s kind of your basic Web 2.0 strategy, where an involved online community creates two-way communications of information. They send us emails and text messages about the developments, while we post to the Web site. The directness and immediacy of the Web have allowed us to build up the kind of reporter-source relationships that might otherwise take years.

Read more here.