Pranksters Deliver Spoof Version of Future New York Times

The Iraq war has finally ended! George W. Bush has been indicted for treason! Those were some of the headlines blaring from a fake edition of the New York Times delivered to more than a million people yesterday by a group of subversive satirists.

The remarkably well-rendered facsimile of the Times, dated July 4, 2009, presented a hopeful vision of Barack Obama's America under the motto "All the news we hope to print."

In the liberal fantasy world imagined by the pranksters, Americans are finally getting universal health insurance, the Patriot Act has been repealed, Condoleezza Rice has confessed there was no WMD threat, and columnist Thomas Friedman has come clean, saying "I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write."

The comic geniuses behind the satirical coup are The Yes Men, a group of anti-consumerist satirists whose brilliant exploits are documented in their their 2003 self-titled movie.

The New York Times appears to be taking the prank in stride. In a post on the City Room blog, Times reporter Sewell Chan wrote, "A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort. I consider this a gigantic compliment to The Times."

The spoof edition of the New York Times can be viewed online, although the servers have been crashing periodically due to high traffic.

Editor & Publisher and Gawker have more details on the prank, including an account of how they pulled it off.

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