Sometimes it Doesn't Pay to be First

By now we’re all familiar with the fact that NBC held off reporting Tim Russert’s death for an hour or so until they could notify his family, at which point Tom Brokaw broke in to programming to make his announcement. The other networks were aware of what had happened, but apparently networks have a “tradition” that allows the network that suffers a death to be the first to report it. However, that was before the darn internet, its enterprising twitterers, and wikipedia.