Follow Up on TAG Story

Exit133 made it onto the pages of the News Tribune’s Editors Blog late Saturday regarding the TAG story:

The story broke on exit133 and the Business Examiner’s website before it did in the TNT.

I heard the rumors early in the week and had our arts reporter, Rosemary Ponnekanti, start calling the TAG director and board members. They wouldn’t talk to her until Wednesday.

Getting our readers the news as soon as we can is one of our highest guiding principals here. However, one principal trumps that: accuracy. We check out and verify everything we print online or in the printed newspaper. We’d rather be late and accurate than early and wrong.

Until we could get an official TAG executive to confirm the rumors we couldn’t print anything. If we were wrong and TAG wasn’t closing the harm we could have done to them would be hard to fathom.

It would appear that Craig Sailor is implying Exit133 and the Business Examiner do not value accuracy and would rather be early and wrong than late and accurate.  To set the record straight, we had more than two sources for the story including high level staff and it was verified by a board member before it was ever posted on the site.  The entire cast, staff, board, and several friends of TAG were told after the last show.  We queried whether it would be appropriate to publish or if there was unfinished business that should take precedence.  We were given the okay.

We want to make it clear to all our readers that our stories are indeed verified or we have multiple sources telling the exact same tale. 

In rethinking our original post, maybe we should’ve been less hesitant about presenting the facts – which left it too open to interpretation as merely rumor – and more clear that “our little birds” are not in the business of rumors, but in positions to give us solid facts.

Link to the TNT Editors Blog

Previously on Exit133

Over at ErikEmery