A university paper in Illinois had spent a year chronicling the thoughts of a motherless eight-year-old whose father was serving in Iraq.

But there was an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy problem with the story. And you, my devoted readership, have been given some broad hints as to what that is.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

Kodee Kennings's story was heart-wrenching.

For nearly two years, Kodee, a motherless 8-year-old, spoke and wrote movingly of her struggle to deal with her father's deployment to Iraq with the 101st Airborne, and the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University chronicled her thoughts in its pages.

But there was no Kodee Kennings, and the elaborate hoax exposed on Friday left the newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, deeply embarrassed.

"Certainly for us it's a sad day," said Eric Fidler, the newspaper's faculty adviser for the past year. "Some good can come from this, but it doesn't help our reputation."

A 2004 graduate of the university who posed as Kodee's guardian says she and a former Daily Egyptian editor concocted the story to help his career. The former editor denies that and says he was duped, too.

The 10-year-old girl who posed as Kodee in public appearances and a man who pretended to be her father say they were unwitting participants in the scam and believed they were acting in a film.