Mitt Romney just told America that he will not run for president in 2016, which is confusing, because the Daily Beast and friends were just yelling the opposite.

Business Insider was very confident this morning:

The original URL slug for that post, why-mitt-romney-is-going-to-run-for-president-2015, now redirects to a post titled "Mitt Romney is not running for president." The original post is gone.

Mark Halperin at Bloomberg wanted so, so badly to say that Romney was running, but instead only very heavily alluded to it over and over again:

The ice is about to break. Based on all the conversations I have had with Romney World this week, I would bet that Mitt and Ann Romney's proposition, that if he runs he will become the Republican nominee, is about to be tested.

Just say "he's going to run!" Or don't, if you don't actually know that he's going to run, which turned out to be the case.

But the biggest humiliation of the day goes to the Daily Beast, which trumpeted its wrongness with big, cool words like exclusive and scoop:

The Daily Beast's exclusive now explains that reality has run "contrary an earlier report published in The Daily Beast, which relied on multiple sources close to Romney indicating that the former Massachusetts governor was about to launch a third campaign for the White House."

There are probably worse editorial strategies, anyway: hook 'em with a fantasy, keep 'em around for the truth.

Photo: Getty