Wikipedia updated its pages to account for the death of NBC News’ Washington bureau chief Tim Russert half an hour before a news alert was release by the Associated Press (AP), Brian Cubbison from the Syracuse Post-Standard blogs.

The first update to the online encyclopedia entry for Russert was made at 7:01pm (GMT) on June 13 to add the date of his death to the page – 35 minutes before AP’s alert.

Cubbison’s post interestingly links to a Businessweek article on the same phenomenon – a commenter on which points out that the IP address of the user who made the first amendment to Russert’s Wikipedia entry belongs to Internet Broadcasting Systems, the same company behind NBC’s website.