YES

An April Fools’ issue is, ironically, not something that should be taken lightly or thrown together at the last minute to try and get cheap laughs at the expense of whatever pop-culture fads or icons have not as of yet expired. Michael Zarkin, former ombudsman for the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily, advocated that newspapers who wish to publish an April Fools’ issue begin the process as early as January.

The reasoning behind that? Zarkin writes: “Good satire takes time. While a reporter usually can hack together a story ... in little time, a genuinely funny humor article requires careful preparation.” He says satire also takes research, because “it must be similar to the truth in order to be funny.”

Those who wish to write satirical stories must possess a greater knowledge of t she issue at hand than those who wish to write non-satirical stories. If the writer does not have a sufficiently great wealth of information, the story will fail as a parody and have no comedic worth because the writer will essentially be satirizing nothing, and a satire of nothing is just more nothing.

Yet newspapers should still not feel dissuaded from creating a satirical issue the first week of April. While an April Fools’ issue is certainly a vehicle for the newspaper’s staff to comment on the prevalent themes and people in the past year, they are a more important asset to the reading public; these parody papers give the populace a rare view into the personality of the staff that they otherwise would not see in columns, editorials, cartoons or even ridiculous doodles made in upper-level English classes.

All college newspapers should strive to put out an April Fools’ issue, as long as they just realize that, despite the seeming contradiction, an issue full of jokes should be taken very seriously.

Christopher Becker,
Advance-Titan Managing Editor

NO

Newspapers should not publish April Fools’ Day issues. It only confuses their readers, or angers them, neither of which is something that newspapers should consider to be desirable outcomes. And, in the atmosphere of a newsroom struggling to produce humorous and outrageous pseudo-articles, and as the general hysteria level rises, discriminating judgment takes a back seat to bad judgment, and the whole tone can move away from side-splitting humor to libel, invasion of privacy or indecency, alienating the audience and destroying the credibility of the newspaper. So, no, don’t do it. If you do, your letter bin will be full, and not one writer will thank you for grafting the chancellor’s head on Britney Spears or a pregnant Demi Moore.

Of course not all efforts end in disaster: A few years ago, the BBC solemnly announced on its April 1 newscast that Big Ben was to become digital. The British public seemed to take it in stride, listened and laughed. And although most Oshkoshians enjoyed an April 1 letter to the Northwestern a few years back suggesting the Mercury Marine engines being tested on the north side of the Fox River just off the Wisconsin Street Bridge were pushing Oshkosh northwest toward Green Bay, a few expressed alarm and suggested a legislative solution.

But that was then. Now it’s probably a good idea to lay off humor, satire and irony. The American public, once avid readers of overblown and windy outrage and satire, now seems not to be willing to spend the time to decipher satire. So long as there’s no laugh track in a newspaper, leave it be. Stick with reporting the truths that fall from politicians’ lips. Then only the members of one party will call for your blood.

Dr. Gary Coll,
Department of Journalism