- JumpStock/Photos.com
- The Internet remembers everything.
Many years ago—I’m being gallantly vague about how many—a young writer broke into journalism in the worst possible way. One of America’s largest newspapers published a story she’d submitted about her exciting adventure in a far-away land. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t true. Nothing of the sort had happened to her—it had happened to someone else and she’d written it up in the first person because it was a lot more exciting that way. Unfortunately, it hadn’t happened to someone else either. She’d been flimflammed by a complete stranger who sized her up as credulous beyond compare and got her to bite on an urban legend that had been around forever. Unfortunately, she’d never heard it. Unfortunately, neither had her editor.
But I didn’t feel good about saying no. Surely, someone her age—mid-20s—had a right to recover from her mistakes as well as learn from them. Thank God that at her age I’d had the right to recover from my own. But I’d had more than a right—I’d had an opportunity. She didn’t. Progress had taken it away from her—and who dares call Google anything but progress?
