WikiNews reporting on the London Blast

WikiNews, the open source news reporting site, has been reporting on the London Blast from 30 minutes after the first blast. The original 4 line article was published 7th July 08:24 (time is UTC/GMT, so -1 hour on BST), and updates then occur at 08:34, 08:36, 08:38, 08:41, … and on until the most current and comprehensive update (as I write) on 9th July 14:58 (which corrects information about casualties, see the differences between this and the previous version).

For me, what’s amazing is how the story was updated every few minutes for hours on Thursday, with many contributors adding details, quotes, hot lines and other information. I don’t know if the BBC reporting was as fast as WikiNews’, but it didn’t feel like it was being updated all that speedily. It’ll be interesting to see how WikiNews evolves as a news medium ‘by the people, for the people’.