Yesterday, I spotted a headline in trade magazine Editor & Publisher about hyper-local reporting (registered subscribers only). Only hours later, here’s a dramatic case study to back it up. When a road bridge over the Mississippi in Minnesota collapsed last night, a blogger called Noah watched this human tragedy and engineering disaster happen. News reporting really has changed.

Update: Here are a few before-and-after pictures. The bridge was opened in 1967. The steel deck-truss bridge in the foreground of the first image, courtesy of Doug Rose @ Journal, is the one that collapsed.

Here’s a picture, courtesy of Texas Rainmaker (who has more coverage) that shows the structure better. The central span is 140m wide, and was designed by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Power Line Blog has this picture, taken from the bank, which shows the bridge after its collapse:

There’s a slideshow of post-collapse images at the StarTribune, and another of amateur pictures over here.

I understand how people can make a lot of money if just one in ten thousand fools click on a spam link for cut-price medication paid for by Canadian taxpayers, or buy a dodgy video of Hilton family entrepreneurs. I didn’t expect to see someone punting history articles, however.

This one (valiantly caught by Akismet) must have seen the history tag on my blog, because it is pushing a short, addictive biography on Benjamin Franklin. The same site contains this gem: Civil War Uniform Buttons - The Small Details Make All the Difference! Now I won’t sneer. Considering the small details I’m fussy about in my hobby, I guess all hobbyists are the same. And it’s true I  have received spam when the International Guild of Knot Tyers website was hacked. Why I’m receiving mail from them in the first place I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader, but in their defence, the spam wasn’t their fault and didn’t punt a short but thrilling history of scouting knots.

If this is a trend, I might start looking more favourably upon spam. After all, I’ve long said that too few modern pundits read history, and too many pay attention to Ms Hilton. Will this reverse the trend? Will the spam mafia and pr0n kings tolerate the competition from bearded professors and bespectacled geeks?