Investigative journalism by the masses

Here is a timeline of events in the CBS memo forgery story. The spin machines of both the left and the right are madly spitting imprecations and producing experts at each other, but the bottom line is that it is still unclear whether the documents cited in last Wednesday's airing of 60 Minutes II are forgeries or not. I think the thing to take away from this is that a media organization (especially a big one) shouldn't be eager to go to air (or print) with documents whose authenticity can reasonably be questioned. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

Other links: the LA Times story (registration required) about the role of the "new media" in the breaking of the story, and a detailed typographical analysis (leaning in the "they're forged" direction) of the memos.