Love your second-to-last line: “I’m not sure what the business model of the future is, but having competing journalists duplicate each other’s coverage isn’t part of it.” The practice of duplicating a competition’s story is perhaps the worst, most antiquated hold-over from the last century.If you get beat, link to your competition (your readers deserve to know the news when you do, not when you finish duplicating it) and then work like hell to add value by tracking down follow-up information.