The Los Angeles Times and many other news outlets recently ran stories about Desmond Hatchett going to court and “pleading with the state of Tennessee to help him pay for child support.”

Desmond Hatchett

The stories said that the 32-year-old man set a Knox County record for his ability to reproduce. “He has 30 children with 11 women,” the Times reported.

“Just one problem — the story’s not true,” reports today’s Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Its story continues:

Stan Briggs, Knox County Juvenile Court child support magistrate, said he hasn’t seen Hatchett since 2009.

Briggs, who remembers Hatchett well, said that’s just the start of the errors.

“I think they spelled Desmond’s name right,” Briggs said Wednesday. “That was it. Basically everything in the (LA Times and WREG) story was incorrect.”

Juvenile Court records show Hatchett has fathered 24 children — still the highest total on record in Knox County but half a dozen short of the progeny credited to him. He hasn’t fathered a single child in the past three years and probably won’t for a while.

The magistrate suspects that a 2009 interview with Hackett that aired on WVLT-TV was circulated as fresh news, with a few children added to the story.

* He’s prolific, but Knoxville dad doesn’t have 30 kids (knoxnews.com)
* Man who fathered 30 kids with 11 women asks court for child support break (LAT)
* Tennessee man dubbed “Octodad”: Questions and more questions (LAT)
* 2009 TV report: 29-year-old man has 21 babies by 11 women (WVLT)

* Here’s the story with the boy’s name spelled correctly (record-eagle.com)

For more than a year, Gabriel Sherman has been hard at work on a book about Roger Ailes. He’s continued, though, to write stories about the Fox News chief for New York magazine, including one today about Ailes’ involvement in a community newspaper war. (Ailes and his wife own the Putnam County News and Recorder. A competing newspaper is launching today.)

Sherman writes in the last paragraph of today’s New York magazine post:

This week, I learned that my PCN&R subscription had been canceled. When I called the paper to ask about it, [editor Doug] Cunningham told me that because of my pending book on Roger Ailes and Fox News, “we don’t desire to have a relationship with you.”

Sherman tweeted this morning: “After the paper’s editor told me I wasn’t allowed to subscribe, my wife subscribed. But they canceled her subscription 90 minutes later.”

* Roger Ailes is in a newspaper war (New York)
* Read Sherman’s tweets about Ailes’ new print competition (Twitter)
* Ailes: I’m writing a memoir because other people are writing about me (JimRomenesko.com)

h/t @geneweingarten

* A shocking wake-up call for the owner of a Saturn (CBC.ca)
* Of course, this is going up on Romenesko’s Pinterest page (Pinterest)