QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 8th December 2009, 12:07am)
This story is all over NBC now.
That's hopeful. I recall that one or two other Wikipedia stories, ones that we all thought deserved to be in the mainstream, staggered for a while in the gossip/blog arena until a single jolt threw it into the mainstream press. Once that jolt happened, the mainstream press everywhere followed like sheep. It was like they were waiting in the wings for the first major outlet to stick its toe in the water, and then they all dived in gleefully.
I think the Essjay story was one of them. Until
The New Yorker actually came out with a correction on its website (and later in print), the story gurgled along at a very low level. Then all of a sudden, it was a "Safe For Mainstream" story and it was picked up everywhere.
The question at this point is whether any mainstream reporters will follow up on the information in this thread. It took just one mainstream reporter in Kentucky to make a few calls and confirm that Mr. Ryan Jordan (aka Essjay) was not quite a scholar with two PhDs, but more like a junior college dropout. That was very helpful in terms of filling in the details. There is no substitute for a real-world local reporter, who gets a paycheck for doing it, to make a few local calls and identify himself as a local reporter. We need reporters in London and France to start asking questions on this Livingston story.