I’ve been scooped before, but never by my own paper. It was quite a shock when I saw Tuesday that we had broken a story about Peru getting a new Chick-fil-A location. It didn’t take long for the news to spread throughout the Illinois Valley, and for spirited conversations to erupt online.

Alas, for fried poultry lovers in the area, the news was not true, and, after a few quick checks to make sure I wasn’t losing my grip on reality, Shaw Local News Network also had never reported it. The social media post that circulated so quickly and was credited to Shaw Local was a hoax. The goal of it eludes me right now, but “for laughs” is always an option.

It’s easy to see why it was so popular, however. We love covering new businesses, especially restaurants, because they are usually well-read. Food always tastes better if someone else makes it, and even better if you don’t have to do the dishes.

So rest assured, if Chick-fil-A does open a spot in the area, we will be the first to tell you.

The incident also highlighted an issue that we’ll have to deal with more and more as technology progresses. Before social media, when the local newspapers were the only game in town for getting out information, there were multiple people who read and verified an item before it ever showed up in print. If you saw it in your local paper, you could trust it was accurate and, if there was a mistake, they owned up to it at the soonest possible moment.

Integrity is what you buy when you grab a newspaper off the newsstand or sign up for a digital subscription. The people behind the headlines work tirelessly to ensure what you get is accurate and relevant.

The advent of social media has allowed everyone to share their voice with the world, and artificial intelligence has given them the ability to create content with ease, but none of that can replace the role of a local community newspaper.

A community newspaper works because readers trust it. Often, it has been a fixture in the community for decades or, in many cases, more than a century. There are times when TV trucks and reporters with microphones come out from Chicago to cover the Illinois Valley, and maybe they’ll even stay a couple of days until the storm debris has been cleaned up or the arrests made. But your local reporters, who are in your communities every day, are the ones who cover the cleanup and the recovery.

The shared hoax looked real enough at first glance, but it fell apart on closer inspection. However, it wasn’t meant to be scrutinized. It wasn’t designed to inform readers, and it was designed to elicit an emotional reaction. As a creative writing piece, it was all right. As journalism, even for fake news, it was abysmal.

What happened with that hoax also showed us something encouraging. People want to be in the know. For all the news in the industry today, it’s not because we’re looking for readers. And we’re glad to have you.

Understand that the newspaper in your hand or the story you are reading on your screen was created by real people doing real work and was touched by trained professionals whose goal is to provide you with accurate and relevant local news.

And rest assured that when a new chicken joint opens up in town for real, we’ll be the first to let you know.