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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly: The NYT link was written 4 hours ago (~6AM EST) - but the decision seems to have been released around ~10AM EST. I suppose everyone expected this post the leak.

Without taking any side on this issue: this is a tough day in America, when a 50-year precedent is overturned.

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I believe that pre-writing articles for both sides of major binary decisions and only releasing the one that turns out to be correct is standard practice at large news organisations, where the value of being first to publish is far higher than the cost of writing two articles.

Especially when you have a leaked opinion and already know what it's going to say.

Unrelated: A journalist friend told me that their (very big) media firm started writing obituaries of the public figures as soon as they landed in hospital and were old.

There were many (tens) obituaries written for the people who went to live on for more years or are are still living.

Sometimes, they publish it by mistake - https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/french-radio...

Id imagine for important news it would be easy enough to just write two articles and release the correct one, especially if your main concern is being first to publish

A slightly different situation, but it reminds me of the classic election-day crossword, which was cleverly constructed to support either outcome: http://www.alaricstephen.com/main-featured/2017/7/3/the-clin...

They could have pre-written this but also the NYT is the world's most well connected news organisation.

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they had found out earlier just like previous decisions have been leaked.

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