Tom Foremski has some of the details on why Yahoo! went early with their news from yesterday. Anyone who has ever had to deal with big news, a reorg, ship dates, product announcements, exec arrival, exec departure, knows about the scoop mentality and how hard it can be. There was a time, not too long ago, when it appeared that RegFD and Sarbox would actually help with this, but they ran into the buzz saw of blogs and citizen journalists, who are as driven to be first as is the most ink stained of wretches at a daily paper.
A really challenging area is embargos -- the idea that a company can pre-brief a group of people 1:1 with the embargo lifting at a specific time. This can be good for all -- it allows the news outlets to get 1:1 time, it makes it easier for a company to have a conversation instead of a press conference, it eliminates the rush. On the flip side, the PR nightmare is doing all or most of the pre-briefs and then having someone bust embargo and run news -- now everyone is mad!
It's interesting to me to see the collisions of worlds. Having a true conversation means taking time, having news that is time sensitive means it is hard to do. Everything we try here is a compromise, and what's the outcome of a compromise? Everyone is a bit grumpy. :)