Well, let's be fair here, though.
The reporter and I spent a great deal of time talking about "internet life" versus "real life."
The reporter feels strongly, and I think legitimately, that real life encounters are more important, more relevant, than cyberspace encounters.
The reporter had not had time--my God, we are talking DAYS--to read the massive library of stuff accumulated on the internet about this fraud, and admitted that.
He was going by personal interviews, not by clicking on the screen of a computer.
I was okay with that, because again, there are DAYS--and I mean 24-hour days--of reading material on this fraud, and surely no newspaper editor is going to give a reporter a whole week, and overtime too, to read the internet.
And I was okay with that; the guy does not have all the time in the world, after all.
I guess I see your point. Reporters should only do stories that fall squarely in their laps. Their time is valuable, after all, and how important can a story be if they have to chase it down.
All the real important stories come over the wire anyway, so there's no need to ever leave the office. Most of the time there's not even a need to rewrite the wire copy.
The best stories write themselves, or rather, are written by someone else!
And they wonder why people have questions?