PARIS -- British newspapers sometimes give away CDs or DVDs in the hope that readers enticed by free copies of "Batman 26" might cast a passing glance at the headlines, too. One newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, has reversed that approach, to spectacular effect. Instead of giving away a disk, it acquired one (or more) of them containing the expense records of members of Parliament. As The Telegraph splashes tales of taxpayer-financed duck islands and moat-cleaning across its front pages, there is talk of a political revolution along the Thames. Some of the conventional wisdom of the news business has gone belly up, too. One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, "exclusives" stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion.
PARIS -- British newspapers sometimes give away CDs or DVDs in the hope that readers enticed by free copies of "Batman 26" might cast a passing glance at the headlines, too.
One newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, has reversed that approach, to spectacular effect. Instead of giving away a disk, it acquired one (or more) of them containing the expense records of members of Parliament.
As The Telegraph splashes tales of taxpayer-financed duck islands and moat-cleaning across its front pages, there is talk of a political revolution along the Thames. Some of the conventional wisdom of the news business has gone belly up, too.
One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, "exclusives" stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion.
