On Gwen Graham announcement, who scooped whom?

in Apolitical/Top Headlines by

Despite CongresswomanĀ Gwen Grahamā€˜s email tellingĀ supporters she wanted them to ā€œhear it firstā€ of her possible bid for governor, two other media outlets broke the news before she did.

The admittedly inside-the-Tallahassee-bubble question is, who got the scoop:Ā POLITICO FloridaĀ or theĀ Tallahassee Democrat, Graham’s hometown newspaper?

For the record, Graham’s own email announcing her consideration of a run was receivedĀ at 7:08 a.m.

But POLITICO Florida’sĀ Marc CaputoĀ had it in his Thursday morning Playbook email, crowing he had it first. FloridaPolitics.com received that email at 7:01 a.m.

Caputo’s separate post on the Graham news is timestampedĀ 5:37 a.m.

ā€œRemember you read the above story on POLITICO Florida, and not in other major Florida pubs first,ā€ he wrote in Playbook.

ā€œThis way, as with other POLITICO scoops the past week (Trump’s campaign managerĀ falsely dissing the RPOF chair, a prosecutorĀ not charging him for batteryĀ in a separate incident), you can smile when other outlets try to fob off the news as if they broke it.ā€

Not so fast, said Tallahassee Democrat executive editorĀ William Hatfield.

The newspaper’s websiteĀ posted a story early Thursday headlined ā€œGwen Graham announces possible run for governor.ā€

In a Facebook post, HatfieldĀ wrote, ā€œThis scoop went live on tdo.com at 5 a.m.ā€

ā€œā€¦ Haven’t yet met Rep. Graham but have always heard that she is a hugger,ā€ Hatfield added. ā€œI reckon a lot of us will find that out in the next couple years!ā€

The story, written by Democrat veteranĀ Jeff Burlew, was last timestamped at 8:10 a.m., although the stamp resets every time the story is updated.

A recent court-ordered redistricting of the state’s congressional seatsĀ turned Graham’sĀ 2nd District into a Republican-leaning one that the Democratic first-termerĀ likely would not retake.

The district’s new boundaries alsoĀ divide her home county of Leon in two.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected].