First place goes to Pete Williams of NBC News, for tweeting the news at 3:30.
The US Supreme Court has agreed to take up the issue of same-sex marriage.
— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) January 16, 2015
Second place, by a few seconds, at 3:31 goes to Kimberly Robinson of Bloomberg BNA.
#SCOTUS grants cert in same-sex marriage case — Kimberly Robinson (@KimberlyRobinsn) January 16, 2015
Third place, a moment later was Greg Stohr of Bloomberg.
Supreme Court agrees to rule on gay marriage. #SCOTUS
— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) January 16, 2015
Initially I gave the victory to Kimberly, as Pete didn’t use the correct hashtag #SCOTUS, so his tweet got lost in my timeline. Kimberly gracious confessed that she wasn’t first. I think we all need to agree to use the #SCOTUS hashtag to break news. Bloomberg was the first to correctly announce the outcome of NFIB v. Sebelius. If I recall, Pete Williams (wisely) hedged for a few moments while he was on the air, as did Jan Crawford. Update: Honorable mention goes to Chris Geidner of Buzzfeed, who tweeted at 3:31 with a story link.
BREAKING: Supreme Court Will Hear Cases Challenging Same-Sex Marriage Bans – http://t.co/F0gmjKWLtU#SCOTUS#LGBT
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) January 16, 2015
Update: Here is the second-by-second timeline for 3:31, with #SCOTUS (If you didn’t use that tag you are lost to history). (1) Kimberly Robinson, (2) Greg Stohr, (3) Sara Kopit, (4) Me retweeting Kimberly, (5) Michelle Olsen, (6) Brent Kendall, (7) Chris Geidner, (8) Freedom To Marry.