It’s not often that I see silly story in The Wall Street Journal, but when I do, it’s usually a doozy. Case in point: Thursday’s WSJ Personal Journal cover story on “Job References You Can’t Control.”

I should have known where the article was headed when I read the breathless lead paragraph: “Job interviewees, beware: Your prospective boss may have called your references before you walk through the door – and they may not be the contacts your provided.”

As someone who has hired a lot of people – and been hired by people a lot – I know that it is foolish to simply limit the reference checks to the list the job seeker gives you. In fact, I generally make my own calls and do some preliminary checking on a candidate before they even walk in for the interview. Most people who hire do this, and high-volume recruiters and top-notch hiring professionals have pre-interview reference checking down to a science.

So, what’s the point of the Wall Street Journal story? Well, the Journal has discovered that networking sites like LinkedIn and Jobster, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, have made it easier for recruiters to get in touch with people who might know the job candidate personally. No big news flash there, so surely, there must be more to the story, right?

Well, not really. The Journal story is built on the premise that there is some huge change at work now that you can find people easily online, as well as people who know those people and are willing to tell you what they know about them. Yes, the online world has made this a lot easier, but good recruiters and hiring managers were doing all of these things long before LinkedIn and Facebook despite what the Wall Street Journal might have your believe. A new trend, this is not.

And, the Journal story completely ignores a huge issue connected to reference checking using online networking sites – the legal implications. We’re written about this a number of times here at Workforce Management, most recently in a column from attorney Alan Rupe last March titled “Facebook Faux Pas.”

I wonder: is this some indicator that the big changes at the recently sold Wall Street Journal have begun? Is this story a symptom of the old, outgoing regime, or the new, MySpace-owning Rupert Murdoch administration? Only time will tell, but one thing I do know — until the old regime-new regime gets sorted out, I wouldn’t put much stock in any hot new workforce management trends “discovered” by the Wall Street Journal.