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Thursday, November 13, 2008

All the News Fit to Print

The Times spoof
Photo by myself on the subway, somewhere underground.

On the subway, one of many New Yorkers engrossed in Wednesday's New York Times.

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Everyone had their noses in the paper, Wednesday morning.

Across the aisle on the train, I could read the headline 'Iraq War Ends'. The color photo showed helicopters in mid-air. Times papers were strewn on empty subway seats.

When I got to the office, the front page lay on the lunch table. I thought to myself, 'hm', and being totally out of it, emailed some friends asking what the heck was going on.

Well, we'd all been pranked on a fairly large scale. Apparently 1.2 million copies were handed out to passersby. At this writing, the real paper is still trying to figure out who was responsible for the hoax.

Here's an article on the Wired website about what happened.

Related posts: Wednesday Portraits - The New York Times and Climbing the Times.

**'All News Fit to Print' is the slogan on the New York Times masthead.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh yes. Somebody loves the New York Times as much as I like their online version. Nice photo.

dianasfaria.com said...

Thanks for writing about this. I think it's pretty neat. Did you get a copy?

Mame said...

I saw a copy in a garbage can and read the headline and then stopped to read more. Then I saw the date was July 4, 2008 and I knew something was up. Also, the slogan on the hoax paper said something like "All the News We Hope to Print" or some variation on the Grey Lady's motto. It was a really good fake at first glance. Some graphic designer nailed it down to all the deck fonts.
I never get tired of subway images - nice one.

Jilly said...

What a hoot! I hadn't heard this story. Would have been fascinated. Nice story, nice photo.

Sharon said...

I would think that would be a very difficult and costly hoax to pull off. How interesting.

Kizz said...

It's believed to be a hoax by notorious pranksters, the Yes Men and the date on it was 7/4/2009.

http://www.alrdesign.com/blog/2008/11/war-is-overif-you-want-it.html

LARGE scale, huh?

Profile Not Available said...

Wow! I have to wonder how they pulled it off.

Ken Mac said...

those old f trains are on the way out I hear!

tr3nta said...

great quotidian capture!... I love the orange sits... :-)