The Newsroom Dilemma

Conventional wisdom suggests that competition in the modern digital environment pushes media outlets toward the early release of less accurate information. We show that this is not necessarily the case. We argue that two opposing forces determine the resolution of the speed-accuracy tradeoff: preemption and reputation. More competitive environments may be more conducive to reputation building, which may lead to better reporting. However, the audience may be worse off due to the outlets' better initial information. Finally, we show how a source may exploit the speed-accuracy tradeoff to quickly get "unverified facts" out to the audience.