Best newspaper article of the year

A German magazine published a series of lies about a small town in the Midwest. The local paper demolished it.

Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect!

Der Spiegel has, since this went viral, fired the reporter. But not the editor.

UPDATE: Better and better. Relotius and Der Spiegel have been peddling bogus stories for a decade, and winning awards for it. And since Der Spiegel brags about its fact checking it is entirely correct to call them complicit, and peddlers of fake news.

I think that the guild members of the WSJ are covering for Der Spiegel a little bit, since in fact it was the small town paper linked above which first said Relotius “made up facts”.