Ken Lay's Death Confuses Wikipedia

Posted on July 5, 2006

Today's story about Former Enron CEO Ken Lay's death from a heart attack has been discussed in numerous blogs. Ken Lay has been one of today's top searches on Technorati today along with North Korea, the World Cup and Clay Aiken. Ken Lay was also a friend of President George W. Bush. The White House has downplayed the relationship between Lay and Bush and continue to remain quiet about it even now after Lay's death. This relationship has made Enron issues a hot topic in political blogs. The Enron convictions were also heavily covered by bloggers in May.

Reuters reports that Wikipedia had quickly ran through several versions of what happened to Ken Lay before noon including suicide. The status kept changing. At 10:11 it said, "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally led him to his suicide." And then at 10:12 it was no longer a suicide and the Wikipedia entry read, "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack."

The current Wikipedia page for Ken Lay can be found here. And people say the blogosphere is not credible. User generated content can have errors and falsehoods just like blogs but individual blogs and bloggers can earn respect and credibility from readers.