Journalists of reddit, what big story did you know long before it was published because you couldn't properly source it?

1. I've a friend who works for one of the major British boardsheets. They know about almost all the sex scandals before they are published. Sometimes for years. [Jimmy Savile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile) is a good example.
   — EugeneHartke


2. So far as I'm aware, this story never broke, so it doesn’t technically fit the question. But I think the story should be told. Back when I was doing a lot of correspondent work, one of my beats was a small, rural school district in the Rust Belt. This school district was unimaginably underfunded and the area around it was in the middle of rapid population decline. Dilapidated buildings…high unemployment…90+ percent of the kids were getting free lunches…you get the idea. Anyway, in this state at the time, there was standardized testing (around 2005). The superintendent, the school board and the administration were obsessed with teaching to the test. This in itself wasn’t unusual, as that was something that was common then (and I suspect now). Generally speaking, if the school district did better on the test, the district would get more funding. (No Child Left Behind…) I attended every school board meeting, and subject numero uno at every meeting was “how do we raise test scores?” Now, objectively this makes sense. These people want their school to do well, and they want their kids to do well. What didn’t make sense was their methodology, and it began crossing over into, what I viewed, as shady practices. The standardized tests at the time gave out generic “grades” in each subject category (math, reading and writing…IIRC). I’m making these categories up, as otherwise the state would be revealed: Excellent, Above Average, Average, Below Average and Failing. When a student got a mark below “Average,” the school district adopted a policy to pull them from “unimportant” classes (e.g., gym, art, music, shop, social studies), and then it forced them into these horrific classes where they were taught nothing but how to pass the test. Day in, day out, they learned nothing but how to answer the questions. And by “nothing but the test”, that’s what I mean. They learned nothing but how take this test. Imagine being taught nothing but how to take the SAT test. No context. No background information. Just: this is how to take the SAT, memorize these equations and vocabulary words. As you might gather, this presented many problems. First, attendance began dropping among lower scoring students. If they pull you out of wood shop class—the only thing you like in school—and put you in a class where you learn about analogy questions and quadratic equations all day, you’d probably stop showing up, too. Because of the attendance problems, average scores continued to drop. The district doubled down, and it hired an expensive consulting firm to work on driving up test scores. Guess what the consultants recommended? More test courses, naturally from their own expensive catalog. Things continued to get worse. When the stick didn’t work (boring test classes), the district decided they needed to try the carrot. They began out and out bribing students who performed well. Students who scored Excellent on their tests got to leave school for a day to go to an amusement park. Students who got Above Average also got to leave school for a day, but they got to go on a day trip to a local college to take [some fun art course or something I can’t remember]. Average students got some type of food reward (I think it was a pizza party), and anyone below Average got…you guessed it…more boring classes. This scheme presented several problems. Apart from the inherent inequity of the endeavor, the biggest problem was that it violated any number of state laws regarding confidentiality of student records. Obviously, I argued to the superintendent at the time, if kids see their buddies going to an amusement park, they’ll know what their scores were. The rewards chart was posted in the main hallway for God’s sake! He didn’t listen to me, and said that he didn’t think it violated any confidentiality laws. I contacted the state agency in charge of testing, and that's where it all started to die out. The head of the testing agency had recently retired, and I ended up getting bounced around countless bureaucrats for weeks…none of whom really cared a lick what happened at the district anyway. My editor didn't want to publish a story about students' confidentiality unless I got someone at a state agency to say "yes, this breaks the law," so it fizzled out. I published an article that was *sort of* about the issue at some point, but it was greatly redacted and basically ended up being a piece about “methods districts use to raise scores.” I still feel shitty about it nearly 15 years later. I could have done more to help, but I had other stories to chase. **Edit**: Added a clarifying statement; corrected typos.
   — CowardWriter


3. Newspaper reporter for almost seven years. For years, even before I started working there, everybody kept claiming there was a gang problem in town. We'd have the occasional shooting and there was some drug activity, but nobody on the police department would ever say anything about it, and the people who told us this didn't want to go on the record because they didn't want to be targeted. We finally were able to write about it because there was a murder trial going on in town (guy had fired a gun into a crowd of people and hit a guy in the neck - he was paralyzed and died months later). And during that trial, multiple witnesses confirmed that the shooter was a gang member and that the reason for the shooting was that there was a feud between two of the gangs. Turns out there were rival gang members at the party, which is why the guy fired into it - but the guy he hit was not involved in gangs.
   — PAKMan1988






4. When I was in j school there was a lot of chatter about a video of Rob Ford (former Toronto Mayor) smoking crack cocaine. At the time it seemed like a joke. Ford had been through controversy surrounding criminal elements but that seemed to be a step too far. It just sounded ridiculous to think that our city could elect a crack smoking mayor. My memories of the details are a little hazy but I remember weeks before the Toronto Star got their hands on it we had seen a video on Youtube. Clear as day there was our mayor sitting on a crack house couch lighting up a pipe. It was shocking. My friends and I sat staring at a computer screen just wondering what the hell we should do with this information. Within minutes, however, the video was either unlisted or taken down. For weeks that video became the talking point in the city. Our school had several teachers who either were working, had worked or had connections at the Toronto Star. They got the video somehow and we were one of the first to be shown it again. I got to see that video again in all it's odd glory the day before the Star went live with it. The next week Jimmy Fallon was making fun of Ford on American television. To this day I kick myself for not finding a way to save the video before it got deleted. (Side note: I was also doing City Hall reporting on the day Ford said he had enough to eat at home AND when he knocked over a City Councillor. Fun times.)
   — Roseof6


5. Michael Jackson's death. A friend of mine knew one of his entourage. I knew for about an hour before hearing it announced on the radio.
   — needs_more_zoidberg


6. Was writing a big piece on Bitcoin when my editor told me to get into the iPhone X release. I talked to a couple experts and we knew that Apple is artificially downgrading the old versions with the new software, but we couldn't really write about that - no way we could win if they sued us. I was very happy when it was made public and Apple had to face the public backlash. Also, I'm unemployed now so if you're a big newspaper in Europe please hire me pls pls pls
   — BoysOnWheelsOfficial






7. Pitching a public radio newsroom a crypto currency story in late 2012 was like pulling teeth.
   — specialtydrone


8. When I was in school back when Myspace was a thing I was good at html. So, I helped a couple of friends fancy up their page. My friend Jim was an entrepreneurial cat. He got it in his mind to make this into a business. For about a half a year we would snazzy up people's Myspace for 10 bucks. We made a MySpace page for our “business”. When business dried up our page became more of a unofficial school news page. We had pretty much everybody in school on our page so we would post stories, gossip, or anything really. If there was a claim that something happened that was really crazy we would go investigate it. We got an anonymous tip that the young math teacher was driving girls home while their parents were at work and shit was going down. So we would camp out after school out of sight and watch his truck. Every day he left alone. So I refused to grant any authenticity to the story. Now adays you know the teacher would be creeping the site but this was a different time. Fast forward 2 years. Myspace was dying no one really used the page anymore. I was 16 going on 17 and worked all summer to buy a shit car. It was a Thursday and half priced Italian sub day at the deli. After school I let to go pick up my girlfriend (she was in Catholic school so I had to drive across town) to grab some after school Sub action. Guess who I see in front of me, that math teacher’s s10 truck, still had the same bumper stickers. You could see right in the back window it was unmistakable. In his truck was Britney S. Bright red hair with a blue ribbon... Still doesn't prove anything but damn ... God damn... I saw Brittany walking to the library on my way out of school.
   — bigoted_bill