It would seem the news business, like most other businesses, is entering the 21st century in fits and starts. This weekend a story was posted online under my by-line with the following headline:

BREAKING NEWS: Massive fire engulfs Eastman

6 dead; city on fire

When the story posted, I was spending a leisurely Saturday at home in Abingdon. The baby was asleep and I’d just snuggled down for an afternoon nap when my phone started ringing: “Is Eastman on fire?” First I asked why Eastman would be on fire—and then I remembered a training session on Thursday when the manager of our online division had created the fake story in an effort to teach us how to post stories to the Web.

The truth is there was no fire, but the 45 minutes the story spent online was enough for it to be seen by 1,112 viewers and generate a flood of calls and e-mails to two newsrooms—at both the Bristol Herald Courier and our news partner, WJHL Channel 11. It took unsuspecting weekend staffers by surprise because they didn’t know if Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport was on fire or not.

Some callers remembered the deadly Oct. 4, 1960, disaster at Eastman, when 16 people were killed and 400 injured in a chemical plant explosion. Others simply lived nearby and were concerned—or were calling from the company to let us know their facility was not, in fact, burning.

“Our fire department is swamped with calls,” wrote Wanda Valentine, spokeswoman for the company, in an e-mail Saturday. “Where did you get this story??”

Christine Riser, General Manager of Tricities.com, had created the story during a training session on Thursday with a future posting date. She believed she had de-activated and deleted the story to prevent it from posting to the site. Somehow, the story went live anyway on Saturday afternoon.

As the reporter whose by-line appeared with the story, of course I’m concerned the fake posting could damage my credibility—and people will have an even harder time believing it the next time Santa Claus helps police apprehend a streaker or a local celebrity gets arrested while trying to rescue a pot-bellied pig.

But in the end I have to just let it roll of my back at what happened and take a lesson from the modern ease of disseminating information worldwide. Sometimes our own technology overwhelms us and takes on a life of its own. The ease and immediacy at which we can put out the news before the competition can also be our own worst enemy. And part of living in the 21st century will be mastering the technological beast we’ve created.