Hours before the death of veteran NBC newsman Tim Russert was announced by any broadcast or cable news network on Friday, word of his passing took the form of changes on Russert's Wikipedia listing, published reports observed today (Monday). The first official news came from Russert's employer, NBC, when Tom Brokaw broke into programming at 3:39 p.m. (NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is currently on assignment in Afghanistan.) However, the New York Times reported that the Wikipedia site edited Russert's listing with word that he had died and began modifying his entry more than a half hour earlier, at 3:01 p.m. The Times observed that the listing was updated by someone whose IP address belongs to Internet Broadcast Systems, the company that operates websites for NBC's owned-and-operated stations.
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