You've Been Served

In my last post, Head in Sand, there was this exchange with a rep from the Times-Dispatch:

As evidence that bloggers are liars, one Richmond rep mentioned bloggers and Tweeters had gotten the Ukrop's sale story all wrong. That we fanned a rumor furiously that turned out to be false. Did it?

I think they dug it out, speculated on it, and when the sale fell through, they moved on, and all that before the T-D went to press for the next cycle. And essentially the core of the story is true. The supermarket chain is faltering and might very well take a good offer.

And besides, if Jim Ukrops picked up the phone -- big T-D advertiser that he is -- and said to the editors at the newspaper that there was no story here, don't go with it, would they go with it?

Well, look what happened today. Ukrop's sold itself to Royal Ahold. They can't compete in today's market (I'm assuming they mean open six days a week and without wine or beer). So, the Twitter did have it right and first from the beginning and broke this story while the newspaper was still tiptoeing around. WWBT-12 was on it from the beginning, too.