Why didn’t The New York Times‘s “blockbuster” military analysts story get more traction? “Out of sight, out of mind” might have something to do with it. Studying approximately 1,300 stories from forty-eight different news outlets, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found only a couple of stories related to the military analysts investigation last week. Literally two.
Although there was some discussion of The Times scoop in the blogosphere, the Index found only two related stories in the week of April 21-27, both of them in the April 24 PBS NewsHour broadcast. In the cable news universe, where many of these analysts worked, silence greeted the story.
Too bad the analysts didn’t practice polygamy.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.