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 A project made at the Knight Mozilla MIT hackathon tracks changes in the paper of record using Github.

Back in October, the New York Times made substantial changes to a report about Occupy Wall Street protesters marching over the Brooklyn Bridge. Version one opened with: “After allowing them onto the bridge, the police cut off and arrested dozens of demonstrators.” Version two, edited just 20 minutes later, opened: “In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.”

BetaBeat report said the changes to the first paragraph drew criticism, as the question of whether the police had allowed the marchers onto the bridge was central to hundreds of disorderly conduct charges. It’s worth noting that the changes were due to the fact that the story was first posted based on the reporting of one staffer, and then updated with the accounts of two more reporters, and that the final version included both sides of the story. However, a graphic that illustrated the change as an example of bias went viral.