The news of Joe Paterno’s death on Sunday morning shook not only the college football world, but the entire sports landscape as well. However, it was news, or, rather, misinformed news, released hours prior to Sunday’s announcement that reminded student-journalists just how powerful the press can be.

As reports surfaced across ESPN tickers, Facebook walls, Twitter feeds and just about any sports news website that Paterno’s health had taken a turn for the worse, eager followers awaited to hear what seemed like just a matter of time. Likewise, reporters sat on edge for the confirmed word that college football’s all-time winningest coach had passed away.

But in an ever-evolving world of journalism where access to news publishing is literally just a click ”” or tweet ”” away, the mantra of “be the first to get it, but first get it right” went unfollowed by a Penn State news source and its managing editor, Devon Edwards.

Onward State, a student news site serving the Penn State community, tweeted Saturday evening from its Twitter feed that Joe Paterno had passed away, a post that was picked up globally and treated as “breaking news” by such prominent outlets as CBS Sports.

Onward State is a self-described “blogging fraternity,” and a rather small entity compared to its student-journalism counterpart, The Daily Collegian, Penn State’s campus newspaper.

No matter the prominence or establishment, however, being a student-journalist carries weight that parallels professionals. Edwards resigned before Saturday was over, issuing an apology on behalf of Onward State for a lack of caution and restraint in its reporting.

Published is published, and Edwards found out the hard way.

The Collegian, our Collegian, has likewise encountered situations over the past two years that have forced us to deal with reporting the news and getting it right.

In November 2010, we broke the news that former Associated Students, Inc. President Pedro Ramirez was an undocumented immigrant. Naturally, this got a lot attention: the story spread from local radio stations KMJ and KYNO to the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Washington Post.

The story was controversial as well. Several of our editors were forced to explain to Fresno State faculty why we published the story, and many negative comments, both about Ramirez and The Collegian, were posted online by readers as well.

In this situation, we had to evaluate whether or not to publish such a scoop. We had to consider whether we had sufficient proof, whether the story would be fair to all involved and whether it would be worth it to publish. We ended up answering all of these questions in the affirmative.

All this is not to paint The Collegian as the ideal student newspaper, just to point out that we have been in this situation too.

It is easy to imagine how things could have snowballed had we published the story before we were completely sure of our facts, and The Collegian wasn’t on near the time crunch Onward State was in.

Remember, Onward State is a strictly online publication attempting to overtake The Daily Collegian as Penn State students’ news source of choice. Previously, it had a reputation of scooping the other, bigger campus newspaper. And they obviously weren’t that far off, considering Joe Pa did succumb to death shortly after.

But, in the news business, simply being close does not count.

Edwards took the honorable road in falling on his sword. And we certainly feel sympathy toward an otherwise excellent student journalist. But his story shows the pitfalls of the new media and the care even student newspapers must have for their craft.

Collegian editorials represent the views of the editorial staff, not necessarily those of the faculty or the university. For news updates, links to articles and more, follow The Collegian on Twitter @thecollegian.