Social media is no replacement for old-fashioned journalistic legwork.

After it was discovered that Gordon Lightfoot was alive in spite of Twitter and mainstream media reports to the contrary last week, the media changed course and began reporting the incident as new evidence that the “old” media institutions were falling behind in their ability to fully understand and harness the power of social networking tools.

But media hoaxes are nothing new, and they don't require new media to make them happen. From the infamous "Lunar" series published by the New York Sun in 1853 where the paper reported that life had been discovered on the moon, to the Yes Men's BBC hoax where they posed as representatives from Dow Chemical and announced that reparations would be made to the victims of the Bhopal disaster, media hoaxes are less a product of technological determinism than of human gullibility and a breakdown in good journalistic practice. In both the New York Sun and the BBC cases, a hoax was publicized (intentionally in the case of the Sun and unintentionally in the case of the BBC) and then picked up and republished/rebroadcast, unchecked, by other media outlets.

The Lightfoot example has less to do with the old media's inability to harness new media and social networking technology than it has to do with the old media's failure to do what we expect them to do: check facts; seek multiple sources for verification; filter through the noise and misinformation; get to the bottom of a story and get it right, no matter what a phone prankster posing as an authority and the mob on Twitter say.

Lightfoot's continued existence was documented rather quickly by both bloggers and mainstream journalists (as well as hybrid j-bloggers, such as Canoe.ca's David Newland), who made a few phone calls to verify the story with Gordon's friends, family, and publishing company, and then tweeted the truth.

But by then it was too late – the flood of “Gordon is dead” tweets drowned out the credible, evidence-based “Gordon is alive” tweets. Is this the promise of the brave new world of “new” news media? Hardly – this is merely evidence of mobs doing what they've always done. Only now, bad news and bad reporting travels faster than ever before.

And this is precisely why we need journalists, j-bloggers, and others committed to the principles and values of good journalism. In the rush to break the story first, we must not abandon the responsibility to get it right. We need to get over both our techno-lust and our Luddite fears long enough to see Twitter, Facebook, Web 3.0 and mobile journalism applications, Second Life, and all the rest for what they really are.

They are tools. They are tools that allow us to communicate quickly across great distances. They are tools that allow us to build communities and connections and accomplish amazing things. But they are no replacement for journalistic legwork, for careful, critical attention to the facts of a story, for seeking multiple sources for verification and perspective, for ethical journalistic research, and for reporting the truth, no matter how unpopular.

Personally, I loathe the terms “old” and “new” media. Most of the old media institutions today are heavy users of the new media tools. They have to be – budgets are being slashed and audiences have a wealth of perceived news outlets competing for their attention. Tools that make it possible for journalists to do their jobs faster and more independently are a necessity. Tools that allow journalists to reach a wider, more diverse audience are a necessity. But at present, there is no technological short cut that can substitute for good journalistic practice.