Why the mainstream press keeps secrets

Over on Blogspotting, Stephen Baker has a post entitled "Why we keep secrets in the mainstream press", in which he lamely explains why he couldn't blog about his recent cover story on math. I don't buy it. Even given all of the constraints, he could have blogged about the process that the story was going through, and that would be of interest and relevant to Blogspotting readers (and commenters). Leave the subject matter details out and focus on process and management could have their cake and we could eat it too. In fact, the absence of subject matter details would also serve to heighten interest in seeing the eventual story.

Finally, none of the excuses about wanting a non-familiar cover story in any way excuse the lack of after-the-fact blogging of the process or evolution of subject matter details.

In fact, why not simply do an internal blog to capture the chronology and feelings of the moment as they happened, and then publish the internal blog at the moment that the the cover story breaks?

-- Jack Krupansky