Adam Tinworth, the blogging supremo of Reed Business Information (RBI) England, reports how Flightblogger, one of RBIs bloggers, broke the Obama running mate story.

This ties in nicely with that quote I let hang in the air Monday on how beat bloggers pose a serious threat to the newspaper industry (well, threat and threat, smart newspapers set up their own beat blogs of course - which I believe is the story behind Paul Conley's example, Pharmalot).

Adam explains how Flightblogger, aka Jon Ostrower, got his 'scoop' because he knew his beat well and enlisted his readers to help give him the 'where' and 'when' of a story he knew was happening (seems both CNN and Fox predictably failed to credit Flightblogger for the story.)  

On a previous occassion, Adam told me RBI had acquired Flightblogger because he had factory floor level contacts for Boeing aircrafts; he was was not a trained journalist but was doing original reporting; was good at participatory journalism and had all the right instincts.

Ostrower still does what he wants to do, but gets money for it, while RBI scooped up a great beat reporter. It's a win-win, and smart move if you ask me. This is what I alluded to when I said the quote from Conley's post represented the future. Its also a good illustration on the quote from Betteridge I said represented the present in Monday's post.