BigShinyThing

CNN took an easy pot shot at Wikipedia this week for its ahem ‘live editing’ (otherwise known as breaking news) on the death of Enron executive Kenneth Lay. CNN reports smugly how:

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, added news of Lay’s death to his online biography shortly after news outlets began reporting it at around 10 a.m. ET (2.p.m GMT).

At 10:06 a.m. Wikipedia’s entry for Lay said he died “of an apparent suicide.”

At 10:08 it said he died at his Aspen home “of an apparent heart attack or suicide.”

Within the same minute, it said the cause of death was “yet to be determined.”

At 10:09 a.m. it said “no further details have been officially released” about the death.

Two minutes later, it said: “The guilt of ruining so many lives finaly (sic) led him to his suicide.”

At 10:12 a.m. this was replaced by: “According to Lay’s pastor the cause was a ‘massive coronary’ heart attack.”

By 10:39 a.m. Lay’s entry said: “Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial.” This statement was later dropped.

By early Wednesday afternoon, the entry said Lay was pronounced dead at Aspen Valley Hospital, citing the Pitkin, Colorado, sheriff’s department. It said he apparently died of a massive heart attack, citing KHOU-TV in Houston.

CNN goes on to note that staff at Wikipedia ‘did not immediately return calls’. But they’re not the reporters are they?

Ever confused by youth culture, it seems that The Independent newspaper has gone the responsible route and just made shit up. Poor old George Michael was nicked yesterday passed out in his car and a number of ‘controlled substances’ found. But the paper seems a bit confused as to what this GHB drug is:

‘A type of liquid cannabis’ reports The Independent.

‘GHB — a Class C drug known as Liquid Ecstasy that is popular with clubbers’ says The Sun who seem to have actually done a bit of research.

Pardon us for sounding sanctimonious but GHB has been at the root of numerous clubland horror stories. At the very least you could expect the press to google it before they reported the ‘facts’.

In recent months Nanette Hoogslag has been heading a small editorial team for the online version of the Dutch paper de Volkskrant to develop “Oog” (Eye), a new kind of online platform in which artists in sound and image are asked to respond, on a regular basis, to news and current affairs. Each week a new work will be displayed. As the project develops, all the works made for Oog will be archived and accesible. This week’s art is rather cute – oddly. Check it out at the Volkskrant site.

Yahoo! has enlisted Kevin Sites, a former producer and correspondent for NBC and CNN, to produce a website that will report on war around the world. Sites is probably most famous for the footage he shot for NBC of a US marine shooting and killing an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in Falluja last year.

The site will be called “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” and represents Yahoo!’s first major foray into original online video programming. The dispatches will begin on September 26th. Yahoo! is also building a large beachhead in Santa Monica to build relationships with Hollywood, both to buy content and to produce its own. It intends to tap into the rapidly growing demand for video advertising on the Internet and believes that war reporting is likely to be a huge growth area for attracting eyeballs.

The show will basically catalogue modern war fare. Sites intends to visit every place on earth that is defined by international organisations as a war or conflict zones. The list currently stands at around 36 countries. Sites will write a 600-800 word dispatch every day and produce a slide show of 5 to 10 digital photographs. He will also narrate audio travelogues and host regular online chats with Yahoo! users.

According to Sites, this format consisting of edited and unedited material will help to counter growing public distrust of network news. “We are a journalistic entity trying to do things in a responsible way you don’t always see on the Internet.”

The New York Times has the full story. Via Gawker.