Roth or Ross, Only the MPress Knows

Last night I was standing in the foyer at a Buttonwood Tree concert when a friend and neighbor showed me a text she had just received from an old friend and Wesleyan grad, John Hickenlooper, who is now the governor of Colorado.

 It said something like:  "Who revoked my diploma?"

It began yesterday when Wesleyan Green founder Ross Levin sent me a note about a Wesleyan event to support the Occupy movement's Day of Action.  Wesleyan students were going to "revoke" Hickenlooper's diploma because, as governor, he had broken up the Occupy Denver protests.

The Middletown Press and Patch covered the protest, and the Press reported that Wesleyan President Michael Roth had joined the protest to revoke the diploma.  The only problem was that it wasn't Michael Roth, it was a student playing the part of Roth.

So the Denver Post picked up the story and reported that Roth himself had revoked the diploma.  Oops.

The Post has since revised its story, but as of this writing (6:15 a.m.) it was still mistakenly headlined on the Middletown Press site.  Time to tell the reporters that if they don't know the players, they need to get a scorecard.

More on the story at Wesleying.

UPDATE: By 7:30 a.m., the MPress headline had been revised.