STL Social Media Guy

Or maybe it’s the site we hate to love?

We all poo-poo the reliability of Wikipedia as a source. My friend Jack Lail points out over here that the site had updated its entry on Tim Russert with his death before AP moved an alert on it. It reminds me of March 4, 2007 — a Sunday. I was on call for my newsroom and got the word that former Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton had died.

I spent two hours getting the story posted, updated and all the other stuff in place — then checked Wikipedia. Yep. It was already updated, with a link to our story. A month later, one of the guys in our newsroom morgue pointed out that the online Encyclopedia Britannica still hadn’t been updated (it has been since).

(Update: Welcome, Lail-fans and beyond. As long as you’re here, why not subscribe to my feed?)

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