Newsflash: Water is wet!

There was a time when getting the "scoop" was paramount.

Sometimes you got it right, and you revealed that Nixon was scrawling a stinky Dirty Sanchez onto the Constitution.

Occasionally you got it wrong, and Dewey did not, as it turns out, beat Truman.

(Hey, it was a 50-50 shot, and they were on deadline.)

Either way, the "scoop" was the proverbial feather in the cap that ... oh, fuck it. Print journalists have always made dick wages, and trade-off is that you get the ego boost of seeing your name in print, and an exponentially larger boost if your name was attached to a scoop, which only really mattered because publishers wanted to sell more papers.

Which brings us to the fact that we're now living in 2007, and the news is pretty much free.

Now we don't have to wait for the next press run.

Now The Internets and The Google exist, and newsboys are no longer on every street corner imploring us to read all about it.

All you have to do is hit F5 and refresh your screen. And if you've hit F5 anytime since the summer of 2005, you've known that Greg Oden would spend exactly one season of indentured servitude in college before exiting stage right and becoming the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.

So what do we have tonight? Breathless scoops!

The very same breathless scoops -- that Oden, Mike Conley and Daequan Cook are turning pro.

Jeff Goodman is claiming he broke the story at FoxSports.com. "Gary Parrish Reports: Oden, Conley Jr., Cook headed to draft" is splashed across the front of Sportsline. Andy Katz says "a source close to the situation told ESPN.com" the news.

Look, obviously brand-new agent Mike Conley Sr. whipped out the ol' Rolodex and made a few phone calls. It doesn't matter in any tangible (read: financial) difference who got it 30 seconds before the other guy.

And even if it did, I'm sure some message board scooped 'em all.