No offense to the old timers, but I am a new school kind of guy. There was once a time when everyone had to rely on newspapers to get their news. People would have to wait a day or even more before finding out their sports news.

These days, its as easy as a cell phone call, a text, and now a tweet (a word I still and will rarely use). Technology and media have joined together to form the ultimate game of telephone (if you are unaware of what the game is, you can google it. I prefer you watch the movie Gossip).

Lately, WYMT has turned to Twitter as one of the new media outlets that we use to get the word out about newsworthy information, or if the new Star Trek movie was a hit or not, (see Brandon Robinson's Twitter Page for that information).

I for instance have been using Twitter (Derek Forrest's Twitter Page) for any and all assignments that I have been on including games, normally giving score update at the end of each inning. But Twitter is not only for reporters. Most usually "tweet" about their day, but others "tweet" about news they may have come across or heard.

The perfect example of this was yesterday (5/7/09). One person, while watching CSTV saw on the bottom line that Patrick Patterson was returning to Kentucky for his Junior year and posted it to twitter. Well, like the perfectly executed game of "telephone", the word was off and running. Numerous people were "re-tweeting" that Patterson was on his way back to UK. Before you knew it, there were "tweets" that WLEX out of Lexington were reporting that Patterson was taking his name out of the draft and returning to Kentucky.

But then, things turned. In a matter of 90 minutes, the story changed. All of a sudden the story was mis-reported. According to John Clay with the Lexington Herald, the report on CSTV was false. Word was that they found info from back in March that Patterson was going to return to UK. This was obviously well before Patterson even entered his name into the 2009 NBA draft.

So the moral of this story is, even with the expansion of media resources like Twitter(which I still really enjoy), it still comes down to being patient, verifying with a reliable source, and waiting for a news outlet or the targeted source to make an official announcement.

It's really easy to start the rumor, but there is a thin line between the rumor and the truth.

"Again, for a in depth and great example of this, check out the movie Gossip. Its not sports related, but still great."

- Rock