This is a point I first realised in 2004 immediately following the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Indonesia and the Indian Ocean. As traditional media outlets struggled (some more successfully than others) to both present the current status and new developments, Wikipedia offered a digest of the best current state of knowledge, and, via its changelogs, what had been recently changed (generally: added, occasionally removed).
This is a pattern that's followed through, say, the 2010 Tohoku quake + tsunami + nuclear core meltdown, several long-running financial and business stories, Russian campaign interference, the Oroville Dam crisis, etc. Pretty much any story that runs more than 1-3 days and has complex elements.
I'm very well aware that Wikipedia is not perfect, is subject to influence, and is not itself a primary source. There is the odd outlet or journalist which exceeds Wikipedia (Brad Plumer, formerly of Vox and now of The New York Times, for example, has the best article I've seen, hands, down, on Oroville, though that was and remains a one-point-in-time effort, Wikipedia continues to update its article. Plumer, is, by the way, and absolutely excellent journalist, and as before, I am not his mother....).
Wikimedia's expansion into journalism is a fascinating development.