Delaying News in the Era of the Internet

ericb — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:26:50 -0800

Wikipedia Updater Fired For Scooping NBC on Tim Russert's Death -- "When Tim Russert collapsed ten days ago, his colleagues at NBC held off reporting the news for almost two hours so his family wouldn't hear about it from the media....The news appeared on Wikipedia 40 minutes before the NBC report, with all of the verbs in Tim's entry changed from present tense to past. It appeared on the New York Times's web site 5 minutes before the NBC story. It zipped around Twitter all afternoon. According to the New York Times, the person who updated the Wikipedia entry 40 minutes before NBC reported it worked at Internet Broadcasting Services, a company that provides web services to TV stations including NBC affiliates." "IBS says a 'junior-level employee' changed the Wikipedia entry to reflect Russert's death because he or she thought it was common knowledge. When NBC discovered the entry--and freaked out about it--someone else at IBS deleted the date of Russert's death and changed all of the verb tenses back. And then IBS took care of the employee.

'An I.B.S. spokeswoman...added that the company had 'taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC.' NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.'"

Next thing I now, I had a bunch of naked guys on my profile.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 08:13:31 -0800

According to LA's Fox 11, Anonymous is epic evil and considered harmful.

MetaFilter posts tagged with OldMedia

Delaying News in the Era of the Internet

Next thing I now, I had a bunch of naked guys on my profile.