Actually, the New York Times proper didn’t report the end of the Iraq war. But a spoof 14-page “special edition” of the newspaper, circulating free in Manhattan did carry those items. It was printed in a form that was so high quality that many New Yorkers were nonplussed, and was backed up by an entire website that equally faithfully mimicked the original.
Dated July 4 2009, and boasting the motto “All the news we hope to print” in a twist on the daily’s famous phrase “All the news that’s fit to print”, the fake paper looks forward to the day the war ends, and envisages a chain of events that would be manna from heaven for American liberals. In one story ExxonMobil is taken into public ownership, while in another evangelicals open the doors of their mega-churches to Iraqi refugees.
The organisers of the evidently expensive satire are connected at least to some degree to the Yes Men, a leftwing group that seeks to expose what it claims to be the “nastiness of powerful evildoers” through pranks. A spokesman for the New York Times spoof going by the name of Wilfred Sassoon said that the Yes Men had helped with distribution, but that the paper itself had been produced by a number of writers from various New York dailies, including a couple from the New York Times itself. The project had taken about six months and had been funded by a large number of small donors.
The New York Times is “in the process of finding out more” about its imitator.
Look at the big newspaper numbers. We might be going back to the future with little local newspapers after the big inkies finally collapse. People buy what they trust and less people are buying what they are selling.
“An Ontario Provincial Police cruiser rear-ended a Windsor Star delivery van early yesterday, sending both vehicles into a ditch on the side of the road, the Star reports.” E&P
There’s a sign of the times. News van in ditch with 4,000 newspapers on hold. Late breaking news.
NYT going Onion on us?
There’s a market for 400 papers and these giants need a market for 4,000, so being big means you don’t just lose, you lose big. Millions and millions lost. With the web, you can go glocal. Small press grasp and global reach. Sorry, the global thing broke and the losses will continue. They’re trying to salvage globalism by printing more money and calling it a bailout. If you double the number of newspapers, your circulation doesn’t double. Your losses do though. Notice how all the big dying papers are all for the bailout. It’s not working, that’s the way you do it. Your chains are breaking and foundations are shaking. The chain stores are closing. Back to Mom and Pop business. All politics is local as Tip O’Neill said. The world domination scheme did what world domination schemes always do. Failed!
#2 – It did years ago, the left didn’t catch on to the joke.