On Thursday the Guardian was widely criticised, mocked and spoofed for some over-eager trailing of a "major" football exclusive that it would unveil at 5.30pm that day to an expectant world.
Unfortunately the "exclusive" turned out to be mere speculation, with no quotes or named sources, that footballer Gareth Bale, who has previously been linked with big clubs such as Inter Milan and Real Madrid, may, come the summer be a transfer target for big clubs such as Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
The only detail the Guardian appeared to have added to this far-from-exclusive was an apparent price tag of £40m.
However, today the Guardian's sister paper the Observer offers up the best of the transfer news from the tabloids, including a mention for a Mirror story that negates even what little news the Guardian's "exclusive" may have contained.
And the Mirror has quotes.
So in the space of just three days the Guardian's "major exclusive" has become a minor non-story in the Mirror, smuggled, perhaps by way of a correction, into the back pages of the Observer.
The Telegraph didn't take that long: http://jambothejourno.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/how-not-to-do-journalism-1/
Posted by: JamboTheJourno | Jan 30, 2011 at 14:35