UPDATE: WWD HAS RETRACTED THE STORY REFERENCED BELOW.

The story about me under the headline "DAWN OF THE DESK" in the "Memo Pad" column of today's Women's Wear Daily is absolutely, completely untrue.

Citing "a source at the Post," it claims that I, as a copy editor, "apparently embellished a Jan. 18 editorial about stem-cell research during the editing process." It says I was "evidently fired from the Post on the day the stem-cell item ran."

This is a complete lie and it can easily be disproved. I have official Post documentation relating the circumstances of my departure, which I have thus far kept confidential. I do not know whether this story was spread by someone attempting to make me publicly reveal those circumstances. In any case, I will not do so at this time, because this utter falsehood may be disproved without opening my personal records.

As a copy editor on the NEWS copy desk and not the EDITORIAL PAGE department, I had NO computer access to the editorials. I would only see them when they were on page proofs, where I would mark grammar and spelling corrections ONLY. These page proofs were then given to the editorial-page editors, who would make the changes themselves. I never once while I was at the Post accessed an editorial in a manner that I could possibly make any change without the editors' full and complete knowledge.

The Post's computer system leaves a trail and it is clear who accessed its files at every stage in the production process. The records will show that not once in my three years at the Post did I ever access an editorial on the computer, which is the only place where anyone might possibly make a change without the editors' knowing.

The WWD story claims I declined comment. In fact, when the reporter, Sara James, called me, I refused to even hear what the accusations were.

I first asked James who was her source. When she said "a tip"—not even saying it was from "a source at the Post"—I did not want to hear it, because I believed anyone who would claim to have inside information about me would have to be hostile, and I did not wish to aid such a story in any way. As a result, this is the very first I've heard of these lies.

This is the most outrageous thing that has ever happened to me in my life.

I am examining my options.

UPDATE: Longtime Post copy editor Joshua Tanzer has sent the following e-mail to WWD:

Dear WWD editors:

I read the item "Dawn of the Desk" by Sarah James (http://wwd.com/issue/article/96351) and I'm stunned by how colossally wrong it is. I work at the New York Post, I know the facts of the story, and they don't resemble what your writer wrote even a little. She obviously heard a rumor from someone and, failing to get any confirmation from anyone who knows, published it anyway. As a journalist with more than 20 years' experience at major newspapers in New York, New Jersey and Oregon, I would be very wary of a reporter who exhibits the standards I see in Ms. James' column. I don't know or care who her source was, but I would ask her if, in accordance with the age-old rule of journalism, she had more than one.

Joshua Tanzer