It’s impossible to scoop yourself.

The very idea of scooping yourself is incredibly ridiculous, but we still hear many old timers cautioning editors to not scoop themselves on the paper’s Web site. The old-school news people contend that if you run a story on your Web site as soon as it is done or the news occurs another paper can pick up on it and file their own version of it.

Thus a paper has “scooped itself.”

This of course is a silly, archaic, print-centric notion. You can’t scoop yourself. You can certainly lose a scoop if you sit on it.

That might be as close to scooping anything as you will ever get. As soon as you get relevant non-feature news stories they need to go online. Every newspaper should be operating in on a continuous-news cycle.

That doesn’t mean you need to do news 24/7, but you should have the capability of posting news to your Web site most hours of the day, and you need the ability to write and edit news in a continuous, non-print deadline centric fashion. This seems like common sense, but I was just relayed a story yesterday about editors and writers worrying about scooping themselves.

 I thought that idea died years ago. Yet, another daily newspaper is having this outdated conversation about scooping themselves.

If your paper is always the first paper to have up-to-date news, people will go to that site first and more often than competitors. Why would I want to go to your competitor’s Web site that doesn’t have up-to-date news stories?

I wouldn’t.

Even if they pick up on your stories and write a version before your print edition hits, you’ll still have several hours lead time at the minimum. Plus, people will recognize that you are the place to go for the best, most current news.

A paper needs good, accurate and up-to-date content to succeed on the Web. Having old and poorly written stories will get you nowhere.

People want to learn about news as it happens. Give the people what they want.

Note: I’ve been visiting people in Cleveland, which is why there weren’t any updates this past week. Expect several good pieces of content in the next few days, including a post about how media companies are quickly losing their assets.