The secret to making a good April Fool’s edition: not making one at all
The Maneater, the University of Missouri’s independent student newspaper, shaped my journalism aspirations and gave me invaluable reporting experience during my first two years of college. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the better-known examples of this week’s newsletter topic.
Fellow editors and I shrunk into our seats during our communications law class as the professor pulled out the 2012 April Fool’s print issue as an example of satire gone wrong. The Maneater gained national attention that year for a yearly tradition that went wrong when an editor changed the paper’s masthead to a derogatory term and added other unapproved changes at the last minute before sending pages to print. Two executive editors both resigned.
The incident had happened before I was an MU student, and by the time I arrived, most students who’d been on campus at the time had graduated. But as Maneater reporters and editors, my peers and I still felt the backlash, which had seriously harmed the paper’s reputation on campus and hurt ad sales.
April Fool’s editions might seem like fun pranks at the time, but the risk outweighs the potential laughs. Even a well-executed satirical issue won’t help your paper be seen as a serious news source, student media and press law experts warned in a Student Press Law Center piece.
“It's so easy to get it wrong and yet so tempting because everybody wants to be the funny guy and make the joke and get the laughs,” Eric Brewster, president of the satirical Harvard Lampoon, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “But a joke gone wrong is one of the quickest ways to alienate your publication and your readers.”
Even if your issue steers clear of legal troubles, yearly satire won’t help your publication’s reputation. “Bathroom humor and gratuitous cussing may not bring down the wrath of the campus, but could lose readers’ respect and undermine the paper’s reputation as a trustworthy source of campus news,” student media expert Dave Reed told the Student Press Law Center.
And more practically, any time spent on a satirical issue is time that isn’t spent on significant reporting. “An issue of satire, parody, jokes and spoofs — if done well — should probably be the hardest, most time-consuming issue of the year,” Mike Hiestand wrote for the National Scholastic Press Association.
“We’re not the Onion, we’re not a satirical newspaper,” Kelly Olejnik, who took over as Maneater editor-in-chief the year after the controversial issue, told the Columbia Daily Tribune after deciding not to run an April Fool’s edition. “I think spending our time working on a good paper, good news pieces ... our time is more well-spent doing that.”
If you need more reasons to pull the plug on a satirical issue this year, here are a few other consequences of student April Fool’s editions gone wrong.
The editor-in-chief of The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s student newspaper, resigned after a 2012 fairy tale-themed April Fool’s issue made light of rape. Months earlier, two university athletes had been accused of sexually assaulting students.
The University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily apologized after its 2015 April Fool’s issue wrote about a Native American student tackled and arrested outside a bagel shop. Weeks earlier, a black student had been violently arrested by off-campus police officers.
Fordham University’s president condemned The Ram’s 2012 April Fool’s issue after a satirical article contained anti-Semitic stereotypes.
A Louisiana high school paper apologized after a 2013 satirical story said a local restaurant was being shut down over health violations and selling reused food. The paper’s April Fool’s edition wasn’t distributed until April 25.
Administrators at Stetson University shut down The Reporter for the rest of the school year after a 2003 April Fool’s edition advocated rape and domestic violence in a satirical sex column.
People stole thousands of copies of the Drew University Acorn after its 2005 April Fool’s issue featured a satirical letter to the editor written in a style mocking African-American Vernacular English.
Student newspapers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Scranton were suspended for the rest of the school year after each paper published “over the top” April Fool’s issues in 2004.
The student government at SUNY Buffalo State froze The Record’s funding after its 2015 April Fool’s issue, even though the paper hadn’t received complaints about offensive content.
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