April Fool’s Day journalism headlines

Newsroom heeds advice of its young, tech-savvy staff

Publisher gives up company SUV to save one reporter’s job

Chicago paper adds 30 new positions, expands coverage area

Study shows facts becoming more popular than opinion

Anonymous online commenters turn off caps lock

Twitter produces revenue

CEO sends T-800 back to 1960 to destroy ARPANET, Vint Cerf

Google decides to just give some of its damn extra money to newspapers already

Blogger actually appreciates MSM source material

Gary Pruitt informed the Rolling Stones aren’t cool any more

Local paper Web site tries new things

Decent paying job at established media company found on Craigslist

Editors respond to inquiry letter with haste and courtesy

Publisher’s predictions of future prosperity proven to be accurate

Sam Zell returned to Baldur’s Gate universe

Zell

Zell

Journalist quits drinking

J school education provides huge return on investment

Reader calls newspaper with rational, reasoned disagreement over story

Sheriff’s Office press person likes to be helpful, knowledgeable

Joe Grimm applauded for sound career advice

Yes yes, and there’s plenty more thinly veiled anger to be had. Got others?

Here’s Tribune’s actual April Fool’s Day press release:

Tribune to Unveil Revolutionary Communications Tool

Alternative Info Super-Highway Created, May Render Internet Obsolete By 2010

Content Delivered to the End-User More Directly Than Ever Before

CHICAGO, April 1 /PRNewswire/ — Tribune Company today announced detailed plans to introduce a high-power, low-cost communications device designed to make all media, including the Internet, obsolete by next year. The device, tentatively being marketed as “The Accelerator(TM),” uses patent-pending nano-technology to aggregate the sum of all human knowledge–everything from where you put your keys last night to the genetic sequence of field mice DNA–and deliver what you want, when you want, directly into your brain. A prototype of the device and a description of its features can be found on the company website at www.tribune.com.

“Forget cloud computing, this is vapor computing,” said Randy Michaels, Tribune’s chief operating officer. “Traditional media companies have been working for years to harness the so-called power of the Internet–we decided that rather than compete, we’d just make it obsolete.”

It might be funny, if a bunch of my friends didn’t have jobs hanging in the balance of the future of that company. Less jokey , more fixy Sam.

4 responses to “April Fool’s Day journalism headlines

  1. I found this on the wire today. Part of report on other April Fools Day hoaxes:

    NEW YORK (AP) — The 188-year-old British newspaper The Guardian said it would become a “Twitter-only publication,” limiting its reports to 140 characters or less.

    (Actually doesn’t seem like much of a stretch.)

  2. I want to punch your molars.

  3. I don’t think that last press release was a joke. I really think they believe what they wrote.
    —-
    J school education provides huge return on investment
    Dammit.

  4. Debra Kahn had written a fake self-obit as an assignment for a copy editing class we had together where she claimed she had invented this very thing. Weird.

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