Dive Brief:

• Company executives and food scientists at Taco Bell heard a pitch for a Doritos-flavored taco back in 1995, years before the company debuted the product and years before a social-media campaign galvanized support for the idea.
• Mark Rader, a writing teacher at the University of Chicago, told Fast Company that he and a group of fellow students pitched the Doritos taco concept as part of a contest for college students back in 1995. Rader produced photos that would suggest the truth of his claim. An executive with the now-defunct ad agency that ran the contest verified Rader's story.
• The news comes days after the death of Todd Mills, who created a social-media campaign in 2009 urging Doritos and Taco Bell to collaborate on such a product.

Dive Insight:

This story keeps getting stranger. When Todd Mills died, we and millions of others mourned his loss and celebrated his life as a story of how persistence and passion matters. Within hours, we and millions of others were surprised to see Taco Bell issue a press release downplaying Mills' role in the development of what became the billion-dollar Doritos Locos Taco. And we and millions of others were positively outraged to learn that the restaurant chain had donated the grand sum of only $1,000 to Mills family as he lay dying.

So here's the thing: Mr. Rader says he doesn't want any money for his pitch back in 1995. (Nor, in fact, did Mr. Mills ever seek compensation.) What Rader wants is a story. He's a writer, you see, and wants to learn and write the truth. Our suggestion is this: Let Rader get to the bottom of this. Let him interview anyone who is still around. Let him see any documents that exist from those meetings the company had with him, Mills and anyone else. Then let him write a story. And in the meantime, let him be the one who delivers a check — of an amount that is not insulting — from Taco Bell and PepsiCo's Frito-Lay to the widow and children of Todd Mills.