Gawker: valleywag, tim russert

NBC contractor not fired for posting Tim Russert's death to Wikipedia

Paul Boutin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:40:00 EDT

Did you read our post that said a contractor at NBC had been fired for updating Tim Russert's Wikipedia page with news of the Meet the Press moderator's death? Um, never mind: Silicon Alley Insider reporter Michael Learmonth has confirmed with NBC executives that "the dude," as he puts it, wasn't fired, although he was briefly suspended. Since the earlier New York Times report was credibly reported from NBC employees, I emailed Learmonth to double-check his sources. Turns out he'd had the correct story all along, but we all liked "fired" better.

Employee at NBC contractor fired for network on Russert death

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:00:00 EDT

When Meet The Press host Tim Russert died, NBC held the news so it could inform Russert's family first. An employee at Internet Broadcasting Services, which provides web services for some of NBC affiliates, went ahead and updated Russert's Wikipedia page anyway. Then the New York Times saw the update and broke the news before NBC itself. NBC executives heard about the slip, got upset and now, IBS has responded by firing the employee who updated the page. Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka and Henry Blodget say IBS shouldn't have fired the employee and that NBC should get with the times. Citizen journalism happens, Blodget writes, "and the genie isn't going back in the bottle." Except what the IBS employee did wasn't "citizen journalism."

Citizen journalism is when a person not in the news profession sees news happen and reports it. What the IBS employee did was like an employee at a newspaper's printing press calling up the competition before starting the next morning's run. The Wikipedia page update was a leak, and when caught, leakers get fired. (Except when they live in California and are smart enough to set up anonymous email accounts.)

NBC contractor broke Tim Russert death on Wikipedia first

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:40:00 EDT

A half-hour before the news broadcast on NBC, a Wikipedia user hailing from IP address 66.187.200.74 updated NBC's Tim Russert's page to report the newsman's death. Scooped by the world's most authoritative guide to Idaho wine? How embarrassing for NBC. How worrisome for one of its contractors. See, the IP address 66.187.200.74 belongs to a company called Internet Broadcasting, which maintains some of NBC's local news websites. Not a very good way to keep a news organization as a customer.