In a previous post, I talked about fake news, what it is and isn’t. In the month since then, fake news has soared in search and seems to be a part of almost all articles and blogs about the media.

Leave it to the New York Times to seek out and find a very successful fake news entrepreneur. That’s right; apparently there is money to be had (if not fame) by creating and sharing totally made-up content disguised as real news.That’s what happened to one Cameron Harris, a recent Davidson College (one of America’s top libreal arts colleges) graduate who was down to his last penny before deciding that the way out of poverty was to create out of whole cloth a totally fictitious news story about the discovery of Presidential election ballots in an Ohio warehouse.The ballots had already been made out in favor of Hillary Clinton and, presumably, they would be dumped on unsuspecting Ohio election officials just in time to throw the Buckeye State to Clinton over Donald Trump.

There was even a photo of ballot boxes, labeled ballot boxes, with some guy standing behind them, which all but sealed the veracity of the article. Although it was later revealed that young Mr. Harris found the photo online, it was from England and had nothing whatsoever to do with Ohio or Clinton ballots. In fact, there were no Clinton Ohio ballots, ever. (A decent independent confirmation of that fact is that Clinton lost Ohio by a very wide margin).

The article, which Harris posted on a bargain basement website whose URL he had just purchased, got 6 million likes, retweets and other social media engagements. Six million.

Here’s the stunner: Harris is hardly contrite. Yes, he concedes, he probably shouldn’t have done it, but what the hey . . .This poor excuse for an excuse is likely the only authentic part of Cameron Harris’ career so far.

My only question is: what DID Davidson College teach him?