The Front Page of the 'New York Times' Before Bin Laden News

After writing a quick post about how word of Osama Bin Laden's death spread rapidly over Twitter even before the major cable networks could get to it, I tweeted something about how I was happy to work under the rapid-fire conditions of the Internet. "Glad I work on the Web," I wrote. "Post took me 10 minutes: http://bit.ly/iPBH0U. Long night ahead for those putting together tomorrow's newspapers."

Indeed it was. Less than half an hour ago, Nick Bilton, the lead technology reporter for the New York Times, posted a picture on his Flickr account (embedded below, click to enlarge) that shows what the Times' designers had put together before Obama's announcement after 11 p.m. EST and the final version that was distributed only a few hours later.

You'll notice, upon first glance, that almost every story has been changed to reflect the major news. But dig around, take a closer look. Reuters blogger Felix Salmon noticed at least one interesting modification. "Note the 'as silver soars' story at the bottom left of the original page," he wrote on his Tumblr, "by the time the Osama front page came out, silver was plunging dramatically."