The immediacy of the web

Doug Wittal called me a few hours after I posted the previous item regarding honouring off-the-record information, only to see some of the information elsewhere.
Turns out Wittal did indeed e-mail the briefest of announcements to city media on Thursday, April 2 — unfortunately, for some reason, the message never arrived in my inbox.
Nevertheless, the press release was sparse on details and only referred to a major announcement regarding a tourism destination project in Kamloops.
The press conference today (Wednesday, April 8) revealed a monumental project — a $250-million vision that will feature Canada's largest water park, a few hotels, a convention centre and a 3,000-seat arena with a retractable roof.
You can read all about it at kamloopsthisweek.com
In fact, that we have the most complete website of any media outlet in the city is a huge benefit.
We were able to post the full story by 10:45 a.m. only 45 minutes after the press conference began, easily becoming the first to report the news in its entirety.
We were able to add photos moments later and video of the event by noon.
While we remain a newspaper in the traditional sense, delivering our product to doorsteps three times a week, our website —and those of the rest of our papers in chain of 100-plus Black Press papers — is the place to turn to for breaking news and video.
Plenty of work has gone into it and we now are posting constantly, as often as we can.
It will only become more current as we progress, with stories as they happen, updates as we get them, photos, photo galleries, thumbshots of our front pages, archives of past stories and video of various news events.