NORMANGEE — The Normangee Star is a 105-year-old weekly newspaper run by a husband and wife in rural Texas about halfway between Dallas and Houston.

Normangee Star is also the name of a Ukrainian-based fake news website that has co-opted the newspaper’s name and runs news from just about everywhere in the world except Normangee.

{"type":"video","title":"Dallas News Video","author_name":"Dallas News","_id":"tjM2ZjYjE6kbgWWtAgTlS3ZJZT7cJetQ","provider_name":"Ooyala","html":"

","raw":"{\"type\":\"video\",\"title\":\"Dallas News Video\",\"author_name\":\"Dallas News\",\"_id\":\"tjM2ZjYjE6kbgWWtAgTlS3ZJZT7cJetQ\",\"provider_name\":\"Ooyala\",\"html\":\"\\u003Cdiv class=\\\"oo-vid-container\\\" data-oo-content-id=\\\"tjM2ZjYjE6kbgWWtAgTlS3ZJZT7cJetQ\\\"\\u003E\\u003C\\/div\\u003E\\u003Cscript defer src=\\\"https:\\/\\/www.dallasnews.com\\/resources\\/motif\\/dist\\/js\\/ooyala.js\\\"\\u003E\\u003C\\/script\\u003E\"}","providerType":"ooyala","providerLink":"https://www.dallasnews.com/oembed","embedType":"video"}

The latter is part of a network of more than 100 sites owned by a young man near Odessa, Ukraine, according to domain registration records. Experts say such sites are get-rich-quick schemes adapted for the digital information age.

By pulling content from other news outlets, these sites earn advertising revenue a fraction of a cent at a time. Multiply that by hundreds of posts on dozens of different websites, and fake news can generate a profit.

Yet in Normangee, pop. 685, Chris and Sylvia Moss, the husband-and-wife team that owns the Texas newspaper, are more concerned with covering their community than combating fake news.

“They haven’t done anything directly against us,” Chris Moss said. “It’s not like they’re trying to steal our identity.”

Go to normangeestar.com, and you'll find the e-edition of the Texas newspaper, a PDF version that editors upload each week.

Go to normangeestar.net, however, and you'll find a Wordpress site that publishes dozens of national and international stories each day pulled from other sources around the Internet.

The Ukrainian man who owns the .net URL did not respond to questions from The Dallas Morning News at the email associated with his domain registration.

The stories posted to the imposter site are not fictitious in the way that “fake news” has grabbed international headlines and even presidential tweets. The stories are real national and international headlines, but the content is culled from other sources, often without attribution and in a confusing or misleading way.

The Normangee Star newspaper, however, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that focuses on high school sports and town council meetings rather than state, national and international news.

Chris shoots photos at sports events and other town functions. His wife, Sylvia, reports from town council meetings and awards ceremonies. They work together to design pages, edit copy and send it all to the printer in Mexia, an hour away.

The paper has been in the Moss family's hands for three generations. Chris' grandfather earned a journalism degree on the GI Bill, and bought the paper at least 50 years ago. The whole family would help get the paper out each week, with the kids going to school with inky hands some mornings.

When his grandmother sold the paper in 2005, she didn't need a website. Her community read the paper in print. People wanted to see their photos in print. Local advertisers wanted to buy print ads.

1 / 6Lead pressman Dean Mooney checks the print quality as The Normangee Star rolls off the presses at The Mexia News. The small weekly Normangee newspaper owned and edited by Chris and Sylvia Moss is printed nearly an hour away in Mexia. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 2 / 6The Normangee Star newspaper owners and editors Chris (right) and Sylvia Moss produce a weekly paper from a house adjacent to their Normangee, Texas home, Tuesday, May 23, 2017. Here, Chris uploads the weekly online edition of the paper.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 3 / 6The Normangee Star newspaper owner and editor Sylvia Moss grabs another bundle of papers from her delivery van as she makes a stop in downtown Normangee, Texas, Tuesday, May 23, 2017. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 4 / 6The Normangee Star newspaper owner and editor Sylvia Moss delivers the latest edition of the newspaper to Flynn Grocery and Cafe in Flynn, Texas, Tuesday, May 23, 2017. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 5 / 6The Normangee Star newspaper owner and editor Sylvia Moss shows her press identification card, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, as she picks up her papers from the printer. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 6 / 6The Normangee Star newspaper owner and editor Sylvia Moss (right) thanks clerk Nina Dempsey for collecting the coins left from last week's edition at Bob's Corner Grocery in downtown Normangee, Texas, Tuesday, May 23, 2017.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

The next owner did own the .net domain, but when he sold the Star back to the Moss family in 2015, Chris was adamant about going to a .com address for the e-edition.

The e-edition, emailed to both print and digital subscribers, does not include individual article pages, but is a PDF of the print edition that readers can download. Chris also posts to a sparse Facebook page, but the paper boasts no other digital articles or web content.

Which is why Chris and Sylvia were surprised to get a stern email from the Canadian embassy earlier this month about an erroneous online article written by "Madeline Patrick."

"CORRECTION required," read the subject line.

A story on the Ukrainian Normangee Star website had misattributed a quote to David MacNaughton, Canada's ambassador to the U.S. The quote was in reality delivered by President Donald Trump and expressed a position about NAFTA contrary to Canada's official stance.

As part of the usual "detect and correct" process, officials at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C., sent messages to the emails and phone numbers listed online.

Most bounced back. The .com address went to Chris and Sylvia's inbox in Normangee.

After calling the embassy and explaining the .net site was not theirs, Chris discovered the fake site and tried contacting the imposters.

He didn't know who was behind this, or what their aim was, but he knew it couldn't be real.

"My first thought was they're doing it so they can coerce us to buy back the domain," Chris said. "I didn't think for a minute it was legitimate."

Fake news can pay

During the 2016 election, a Macedonian teenager reportedly raked in $5,000 a month for posting erroneous stories about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

"The technology makes it so much easier now to make something look real and get more eyeballs than ever before on it, and therefore generate revenue," said Jonathan Anzalone, assistant director at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. "I think that's their game."

Purveyors of fake news don't necessarily have a political agenda, as is often reported, Anzalone said. Many times, these publishers just snag as many domains as possible to promote their content and pose as legitimate news organizations.

For example, washingtonpost.net is owned by The Washington Post and redirects to its .com website. But normangeestar.net? Until recently, it was available.

Although the questionable Normangee Star site is publishing real headlines, it still falls under the umbrella of "fake news," a fairly ambiguous term du jour that is a catch-all for the intentional distribution of misinformation.

Anzalone called this "imposter content", a kind of fake news that appears to be legitimate but aims to drive readers toward misinformation. Although seemingly benign in scale and impact, sites like these can erode trust in verified, legitimate reporting, Anzalone said.

"We are being misled, regardless," he said. "It's trying to sow confusion."

Local news, all the way

No one from the imposter site has tried bullying Chris and Sylvia in Normangee. None of the stories have been about Normangee. Other than the name, it doesn't have anything to do with their local readers.

The Mosses don't think anyone in their community would fall for the imposter site. The readers of the real Normangee Star know the paper doesn't cover national or international news digitally.

"I feel like we wouldn't take any action unless it has obscenity on it," Chris said. "I'm offended, but I've got pretty thick skin and I'm not going to worry about it."

Here, the local news is just that. Local. People here are more concerned about the search for a new police chief, or how the Normangee Panthers did on Friday night, or what the local property owners association is up to.

If people want news about Normangee, there's only one place to turn. They can read all of it every Wednesday in the pages of their paper, The (real) Normangee Star.

The rest, well that's just fake news.

Research editor Erin Sood and researchers Jen Graffunder and Chelsea Watkins contributed to this report.