NY Times shocked that Hewlett Packard set to spy on newsrooms...journalists do it all the time!

The news, on the face of it, is alarming. One of the world's most powerful corporations doing a feasibility study on "embedding" spies in the Wall Street Journal and CNET.

Industrial spying within the news business is, however, as old as journalism itself. There are very few human endeavours that compete as viscerally to "be first" on such a short time span.

Before cellular phones, back in the Pleistocene era when reporters and cameramen (they were mostly men, back then) were dispatched by radio, anyone with a suitable scanner could listen in.

I did. I could hear where crews from enemy news outfits were being sent. Listening to the other guys was as important as listening to the fire and ambulance channels.

True, the idea of a salesman from a company that sells printers getting a job as a cleaner is another step down the road.  And I am properly shocked.  Deeply.