Twitter was in an uproar today over what appeared to be yet another DUI from Browns WR Josh Gordon. What actually happened was @11AliveNews, a social media outlet for WXIA in Atlanta of all places, retweeted a 2014 story about Gordon’s DUI in Raleigh, N.C

Despite the infinitesimal odds of Gordon picking up a second DUI in the same city and under the same conditions as he did in July 2014, the story and the tweet appeared current to many readers. 

The news station offered this: “While doing maintenance on our site, a 2014 story on Josh Gordon was auto-retweeted. Please note this story was from 2014.” It’s almost impossible to comprehend, but OK. 

Meanwhile, though, Cleveland sports reporters, national media outlets and Twitter aficionados of all stripes kinda went wild with the story. 

Gordon’s surely fine. 

This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2015.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

3 replies on “An Atlanta News Station Accidentally Recirculated a Story About Josh Gordon’s 2014 DUI”

  1. A staff member probably paid a bored intern on his last day to pull the hijinks…..just to get a laugh on how many national sports media sites sprinted with the story – complete with commentary – on a slow Monday morning.

  2. It’s more sad that this was entirely believable. Somewhere, meanwhile, Josh Gordon is still trying to reason with himself why he doesn’t need to change and finally take this stuff seriously.

  3. Auto-retweeted. That cracks me up.
    Aint’ the 21st Century grand? Yeah, right…

    Please set the way-back machine to 1999. PLEEEEEEZE?

    Chuckles the Clown

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