Syracuse mistakenly retweets item that says Jim Boeheim is retiring

This just in from the lie-witness news desk: Jim Boeheim may have coached his last home game at Syracuse and could be ready to retire at the end of the season.

Chalk it up to just another Internet rumor?

Yes, sort of, except the story was picked up (briefly) by Syracuse’s official Twitter account, which set off the kind of mayhem you might expect that might cause.

Oh, this silly social network thing.

The rules of journalism used to be “who, what, when, where and why.”

Now it’s often “who, what, when, where,” and “oops.”

It seems a blogger at a community college in Syracuse reported Boeheim had been asked to retire at the end of the season.

The story was linked by @SyracuseU, which lent authenticity to the apparently bogus claim. One problem is Syracuse allows students to monitor its Twitter account.

The school quickly yanked the story, but not before it had been gobbled up and re-routed in blogosphere.

“Nothing in the tweet was true or accurate and we apologize for the confusion,” the school later tweeted at @SyracuseU.

If Boeheim does happen to resign, well, be sure to give that blogger a “retroactive” scoop.

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