Prolog

Newslines originally started as WeCheck, a collaborative fact checking system that used the same software as Wikipedia. The idea was that WeCheck would provide a level playing field for people of all political stripes to come together to debate the truthfulness of statements by politicians and pundits. I still believe there is a need for such a system.

At that time there were many questions regarding the Obama Administration’s response to the 2012 Benghazi Attack. As there was no complete timeline of events I set out to create one. The page soon grew to over 100 items, from the arrival of Ambassador Stevens in Libya, to today’s news. The page rapidly rose in Google’s search results and was receiving good traffic.

But it wasn’t until I started working on David Petraeus Scandal and made timelines for each of the participants that I began to realize the potential of the “newslines” I was making. I started to make newslines for John McAfee, who was on the run in Belieze, and for the Twinkie, which had stopped production.

I spent the next few months researching Drupal, Joomla and other content management systems before settling on WordPress. I transferred the newslines I had already made, and renamed the site, “Newslines”.