yolk yolk

This past Wednesday, the DP put out a "joke" issue - it's not so much an April Fool's Day issue as it is a parody just to show that the DP is independent of the University of Pennsylvania and can print just whatever the heck it wants if it wants to.

The front page was made to look as realistic as possible, photos and all. All the openings of each article started off the same way that they usually do. But if you opened to even page 2, you would have realized that something was amiss...like sanity and legit-ness. 

It was actually really funny at first, as a writer in on the "secret," - there was an article that said Akon would no longer be coming to Spring Fling and would instead head to Princeton for some random graduate student gathering - and there were these girls in my communication class just totally freaking out. "Oh my gahhhhd, I can't believe he would do such a thing." "I have to go get a refund!" "WHO am I supposed to talk to about this?!" And seriously, if you had bothered to look at Akon's photoshopped picture a lot closer, you would've noticed that the thumbs down was very, very poorly photoshopped.

But then, the scathing comments got more annoying as the day progressed. Granted, online, the comments were ridiculous because it was nowhere noted that it was a joke issue until the afternoon. But the people that read the stories in print - like seriously? If you had bothered to open the actual newspaper, it would have been immediately apparent that it was a joke - Tina Fey changing her name to Sarah Palin? CondomWorld opening next to the Radian apartments? Our columnists also went kind of crazy as well, and it did say explicitly that it was a joke issue.

It seriously just showed that you don't read the paper...ever. And sure, I understand, reading newspapers isn't really everyone's thing - even I don't really fully read a NYTimes cover to cover, and I tend to get my news online. But still...it was kind of ridiculous, and as a staff member, as much as I gripe about it taking over my life, it was sad, I guess.

So yeah. For future reference, to both current and prospective students at Penn, there WILL be a joke issue sometime in late March/early April...and some of it WILL be absurd, raunchy, and even offensive (I will admit that the Mad Cow story was a bit harsh and tactless.)

And read! :) People put so much time into making the paper, you have no idea. (At any college institution, for that matter.)