Sometimes it Doesn’t Pay to be First

By now we’re all familiar with the fact that NBC held off reporting Tim Russert‘s death for an hour or so until they could notify his family, at which point Tom Brokaw broke in to programming to make his announcement. The other networks were aware of what had happened, but apparently networks have a “tradition” that allows the network that suffers a death to be the first to report it. However, that was before the darn internet, its enterprising twitterers, and wikipedia.

According to the New York Times news of Tim Russert’s death hit twitter and Wikipedia more than half an hour before NBC reported it, apparently the result of an overly ambitious(?) “junior-level employee” who “made updates…thinking it was public record.” It should be noted that this “junior level employee” was actually working for a company in Minnesota that provides Web services to NBC’s affiliate there, so it’s not as though he was in building when it happened and ran straight to his computer. Anyway, the network was “flabbergasted” and said junior-level employee has since been fired. This citizen journalism thing is a dangerous business, use at your own risk.

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