Hey, genius: I know for a fact they offer a media-law class just across campus:
An Oklahoma publishing company and one of its beat reporters have filed a lawsuit against a [University of Texas] employee who allegedly published a fake news article using several of the company’s copyrighted trademarks.
The Oklahoma Publishing Company and Jacob “Jake” Trotter, a reporter for The Oklahoman newspaper, are suing James Conradt, a service manager for UT Information Technology Services, for copyright infringement after Conradt allegedly produced a false news story using The Oklahoman online news template with Trotter’s byline, said Oklahoman editor Ed Kelley.
“It would be very difficult to tell if this was our material or something he made up,” Kelley said.
In the article, Conradt accused two University of Oklahoma football players, including starting quarterback Sam Bradford, of cocaine distribution, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also states that he then posted a link to the forged article on his Web site and on a Rivals.com football message board.
Conradt has taken down his Web site and replaced it with a message concerning the lawsuit, saying the article was intended to be a joke.
This sort of thing can be an enormous pain in the pants. That fake college-student-kidney-theft story that immortally makes the Internet rounds was falsely attributed to my college newspaper, resulting in endless, endless inquiries from the ghoulish, curious, and gullible.