In its ongoing coverage of today’s historic Democratic nomination of Sen. Barack Obama, Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo’s TPMElectionCentral makes an interesting point:

“Too busy chasing the next story,” today’s news organizations are sacrificing quality in favor of breaking sensationalism. Notes Sargent:

“The pressure on the news orgs is ordinarily intense enough on normal days to be first with literally any shard of info, no matter how trivial or poorly sourced, that purports to shed light on what Hillary is thinking or what she will do. But this has reached absurd and truly grotesque proportions today.”

Sargent points out that the AP’s direct quote of Clinton on a conference call has been publicly challenged by her campaign, and notes that the storied organization’s performance has been “less than sterling” on what is shaping up to be one of the more important news days of the year.