One of my adages has been that the Internet makes newspapers as timely as radio or TV, but also makes them as timeless as a library. Most of the time, that's a strength. Sometimes it's a liability.

The Globe and Mail had such an oopsie moment this morning.

Observe this tweet from @nowtoronto:

Is this for real? http://bit.ly/RTNqE the Globe is reporting that Johnny Carson died? Don't they mean Ed McMahon?

So I click on the link. Here is the headline I see:

Johnny Carson dies at 79

The story was from John Doyle, but it was dated June 23, 2009 and said it was from Monday's paper.*

* The Torontoist snapped the page.

Keep in mind that Carson died in 2005, but Ed McMahon, his longtime sidekick, just died this morning at age 86.

I checked through Monday's and Tuesday's print editions, and no sign of the Doyle column.

I tweeted the following:

That is very odd. I wonder if it's a reprint of an earlier column. I don't see it in the print v. of today's or Mon's G&M.

The G&M's Brodie Fenlon tweeted NowToronto and myself:

Checked on Carson story: It's an archived story attached as a related item to main, but glitch gave today's date

The updated headline:

There but for the grace of God etc. etc.

It's good to have such background material. The stories of Carson and McMahon are forever intertwined. But when something is made to look inadvertently current, people may well take it literally ... such as search engines.

Mathew Ingram, the G&M's communities editor, later tweeted the following:

mathewi @nowtoronto (and everyone else): we republished an old story about Johnny Carson dying, but Google and other places picked it up as new