Wikipedia breaks the news of Andrea Dworkin's death
A major Wikipedia news scoop, in publishing that Andrea Dworkin had died before any other source knew about it, echoed around the internet last week as many bloggers picked up on the slow-breaking news of her death.
On a newsblog run by The Guardian, Simon Jeffery noted that Wikipedia had posted her date of death more than 24 hours before The Guardian's own obituary, the first to be printed in by a major news outlet. Jeffery opened his entry, "Wikipedia — first with the news", by quoting blogger Joe Gratz's comment, "Imagine an encyclopedia that had someone’s death noted in their biography before the first major news outlet had even published an obituary. That’s Wikipedia."
Events in recent weeks have shown Wikipedia's speed in updating biographical entries with news of the subject's death. In closely-watched situations like Pope John Paul II and Terry Schiavo, Wikipedia's entries were updated essentially simultaneously with media reports. After being one of the first sites to note recent deaths like those of Johnnie Cochran and Mitch Hedberg, Wikipedia clearly beat mainstream sources on this news.