behind the news

NBC’s "Exclusive" Enters Third Dimension

If there were a protective shelter for words abused at the hands of American journalists, one word in particular would deserve a special, quiet recovery room.
May 2, 2006

If there were a protective shelter for words abused at the hands of American journalists, it would no doubt be overcrowded. But if it were a fair and just shelter a special, quiet recovery room would be reserved solely for the word “exclusive.” After all, few words these days get so regularly and wantonly tossed around by reporters.

Just in the past week, for instance, a CBS affiliate in Norfolk, VA promoted “an exclusive drunk driving investigation”; NBC Sports touted “an exclusive tour” of the Miami Heat’s video room; WUSA in Washington, D.C. trumpeted “an exclusive look at how you feel” about the immigration boycotts; and WFOR in Miami served up “an exclusive” look at a radio personality named Footy.

In this, the golden era of the Video News Release, no scoop it seems is too small to be deemed “an exclusive.”

Witness this morning’s broadcast of NBC’s Today, which featured an interview between host Matt Lauer and Rolling Stone founder and editor Jann Wenner. At the start of the interview, Lauer pointed out that Rolling Stone is about to celebrate “a huge milestone, their 1000th issue.”

Lauer then went on to reveal that Today had not only scored an interview with the oh-so-reclusive Wenner, but had also managed to land a major scoop about the milestone.

“Until now there has been a tight lid on what the 1,000th issue would look like,” said Lauer. “We have an exclusive first look at the cover. They did it in 3-D.”

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How tight a lid was Rolling Stone keeping on this “exclusive”?

Not very.

In fact, news of the 3-D cover has been circulating in decidedly un-exclusive venues for months, including an article in the New York Times, a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, myriad blog posts, and news briefs on seemingly every NBC affiliate from Norfolk, Virginia to Austin, Texas, to Los Angeles, California.

Granted, in Today‘s defense, none of these earlier reports allowed viewers to actually see the cover in 3-D.

Then again, neither did Today. (Blame it on a technical glitch, which momentarily left us morning television viewers without the use of our usual 3-D glasses.)

But, not to worry. Sometime later this week, Rolling Stone‘s hundreds of thousands of subscribers will get “an exclusive” look at the magazine when it arrives in their mailboxes.

Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.