The story behind the much-heralded Associated Press fact check was detailed in a weekly internal newsletter to the company’s 4,000 employees. TPMDC snagged a copy:
Mike Oreskes, a senior managing editor, offers staffers a description of the AP’s own work tracking down and fact checking the book and it reads like a spy thriller:
“The AP was determined to get the first copy,” Oreskes wrote, detailing how the writers learned a store had “inadvertently placed the book on sale five days before its official Nov. 17 release date.”
“They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched,” he wrote. “A NewsNow moved within 40 minutes, followed quickly by multiple leads as details were gleaned from the 413-page manuscript.”
From the newsletter:
The publisher, HarperCollins, had it locked down. There were no galleys for reviewers or agents. Warehouses were closely guarded. Stores were threatened with large fines. People close to Palin – those given early copies – were strongly advised not to show them to reporters.
The AP had owned the story from the start, with a series of exclusives from Italie beginning with Palin’s contract with HarperCollins, and the AP was determined to get the first copy. […]
The story commanded massive play, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal.com and USA Today, the three major television networks, and major Web sites and portals Yahoo, Google, Huffington Post and Politico. The Washington Post did a separate story about how the publisher’s carefully orchestrated rollout was foiled, and Palin herself, not happily, noted the scoop on Facebook.
Impressive. And nice to know that AP rewards good work. The two journos who found the book share a $500 cash prize that AP gives each week for best gets.