Tuesday, November 27, 2007

washingtonpost.com Redskins safety Sean Taylor has died of a gunshot wound. Full coverage at the Redskins Insider blog.

The Sean Taylor story turned tragic in the ultimate sense early Tuesday morning when the Washington Redskins free safety died from the gunshot wound he suffered early Monday when he was shot in his Miami home.

I woke up to continuing hopeful news, but about 5:55 a.m. ET, my local NBC affiliate WRC News4 first began reporting that Taylor had died. The Washington Post update (I have yet to receive an e-mail bulletin) was time-stamped 6:06 a.m. with a co-byline to Redskins beat reporter Jason La Canfora and Amy Shipley. But La Canfora's updates on the Redskins Insider blog resumed four minutes earlier at 6:02 a.m. after the last previous item at 9:08 p.m. ("Taylor's Status Unchanged").

In all, La Canfora posted 14 blog items over 10 hours Monday. This easily surpassed any other coverage for timeliness and information. It was also personal in the best sense of a blog as La Canfora did not avoid expressing his  feelings -- "Obviously, it takes a supremely conditioned human being, and someone ridiculously strong, to even survive this to this point," he wrote. La Canfora also referred to Taylor as Sean throughout his entries.

Before signing off Monday night, La Canfora wrote: "I'll be up checking in for info through the night, so if I hear anything I'll post it ASAP." When readers e-mailed La Canfora at the blog -- and one entry attracted 249 responses -- he responded to them, including one question about why Taylor was in Miami and not with the team: "Some people have e-mailed me or called unsure of why Sean was not with the team, so I figured I'd clear that up if necessary while I have a spare minute between phone calls."

You might ask: Why all this coverage and concern for a football player, even an all-star player? As I noted in my previous Tidbit, news about Vice President Cheney's irregular heartbeat on Monday took a back seat to the Taylor story (Cheney was the lead story on the "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams") and was relegated to page 2 in Tuesday's Washington Post. (Cheney was supposed to be back at his desk Tuesday.) Coverage of the Redskins in the Post and other Metro D.C. media rivals political coverage inside the Beltway.

The point here is not to question coverage priorities. It is, however, to point out that when it came down to keeping up with the story, the best and timeliest source of information was La Canfora's blog.

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