Are Scoops and Exclusives a Thing of the Past?

Robert Scoble writes about the puzzling problem of exclusives in the 21st century:

Now every single one of us has the power to have “the exclusive.” It really is messing with PR team’s heads as they try to deal with this new world of 20,000,000 people who can make or break your PR plans. It was so much easier back when you only needed to deal with a few hundred or less.

Robert links to Ed Bott’s article in ZDNet, which is a glowing example of traditional and citizen journalism colliding.

Meanwhile, Chris Pirillo muses on whether the idea of scoops has been rendered moot:

But being “first” is no longer important, as evidenced by all these damned memetrackers that I’m getting sick of hearing about. I don’t visit Memeorandum on pure principle – I’m f*cking sick of the echo chamber. We all want to be on top, we all want to win – and sometimes in our quest to find the one ring to rule them all, we forget about giving credit where credit might be due (even if that comes in the form of a simple hyperlink or name-drop). Or, to put it another way, the blogosphere is starting to pull the same tricks that mainstream media has been accused of pulling in the past.

Whether we’re talking to the mainstream media or bloggers, we rarely offer exclusives or scoops anymore. We might advise them that they’re one of a small group getting a first look, but it rarely pays to put all your eggs in one basket anymore.