Mubarak Finally Resigns, Even Al Jazeera Struggles to Keep Up

Some amazingly good news this morning as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has finally resigned his post. I share some of the uncertainty about what might come next, but I think it's far from certain that the country will go down a radical path. There are many reasons to be hopeful for that country, its people, and its regional role. It's perfectly appropriate to bask in the hope that people-power success creates.

The next steps will be dissected endlessly by individuals and media around the world. For now, I'll just note that Al Jazeera, which has provided probably the best coverage of the Egyptian protests (in second place: the much-maligned CNN), had a live video feed of its English coverage of Egypt on its web site (very helpful, because Al Jazeera continues to be hard to get on cable in America). The screen capture above shows that live stream, with the big headline, "Mubarak Steps Down," while right below it is the crawl of headlines, showing the headline that people were still protesting across Egypt as "President Mubarak Refuses to Step Down."

Yep, things moved so fast that even the instant news crawls couldn't keep up with the actual headlines. Al Jazeera did correct the crawl in a few minutes, but it's always exciting to watch news being made at such a pace that even the big news organizations can't keep pace.