When editors were gods

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #10

In its July 27, 1971 issue, William F. Buckley's National Review published what its cover billed as "The Secret Papers They Didn’t Publish." Inside, the magazine offered 14 pages of supposedly "top-secret memoranda" regarding the Vietnam War, dating back to 1963. From all appearances the documents were as newsworthy as the Pentagon Papers, published a month earlier, and many major news outlets treated them accordingly.

They'd soon regret it.

A day after the news became public, Buckley called a press conference to confess that it was all a hoax, that the papers had been concocted in the magazine's offices, and that he never expected them to be taken so seriously.

Buckley said a purpose of the hoax had been to demonstrate that "forged documents would be widely accepted as genuine, provided their content was inherently plausible." He also used the occasion to attack the New York Times, which had been first to publish the leaked Pentagon Papers and fought for its right to do so in the Supreme Court. The Times, Buckley said, "has instructed us that it is permissible to traffic in stolen documents" but not on "whether it is permissible to traffic in forged documents."

Time magazine, for one, wasn't buying it. "None of these remarks furnished any sensible explanation of what Buckley was trying to prove," it wrote. "The National Review, with a 111,425 circulation and chronically losing money, has long been useful as a generally urbane and articulate exponent of conservative views, a field in which it has all too little competition. But its reputation will hardly be enhanced by last week's strange exercise, which in the end looked like little more than an elaborate schoolboy prank."

For his part, Buckley was willing to concede one point: "We admit we proceeded in something of an ethical vacuum."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #9

Not every magazine hoax has been perpetrated on or around April 1. Forbes FYI, a quarterly lifestyle supplement to Forbes magazine, chose November 1991 to inform readers that the cash-strapped Soviet Union planned to auction off the preserved remains of Vladimir Lenin. Minimum bid: $15 million.

The Soviet Interior Ministry denounced the report as "an impudent lie."

Apparently the hoax fooled several major news organizations, including ABC News, PBS, and USA Today. ABC anchor Peter Jennings seems not to have been amused, telling viewers after Forbes FYI's editor, Christopher Buckley, revealed the hoax, "I'll be encouraged in the future if Forbes FYI knows the difference between April Fool’s Day and November 3."

Magazine hoaxes seem to be something of a Buckley family tradition, incidentally. We'll look at one by Christopher Buckley's father, William F., 20 years earlier, in a future installment.

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #8

Discover magazine's April 1995 hoax might not have fooled every reader, but it probably gave a lot of them nightmares.

In a brief story, the magazine described the recent discovery of a new life form in Antarctica. The hotheaded naked ice borer was a "hairless, pink, mole-like creature," about six inches in length, with "sharp incisors" and a "bony plate on their forehead." Its unusually high body temperature, radiating from that bony plate, allowed it to quickly tunnel through the ice and sneak up on unsuspecting penguins from below. After a pack of these charming creatures finished off a penguin, "webbed feet, a beak and some feathers" would be all that remained. They may also have been involved in the mysterious disappearance of a 19^th century polar explorer, but that was purely speculation.

Despite ample clues to its inauthenticity, the hoax seems to have taken in more than a few newspapers and TV stations.

In a generous 2010 tribute on the National Geographic website, writer Carl Zimmer called it "arguably the finest science-themed April Fool's joke of all time."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #7

Magazines' websites have become a convenient venue for hoaxes in recent years, not always with the happiest of results. For example, in what must have seemed like an inspired idea at first, Car and Driver posted a prank item on April 1, 2009 claiming that the Obama administration had insisted Chevrolet and Dodge end their participation in NASCAR. At the time, you may recall, the government was spending billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the U.S. auto industry, so the story had at least a thin veneer of plausibility.

While some people seem to have enjoyed the joke, it appears to have caused considerable upset in NASCAR circles. Car and Driver pulled the piece and reportedly apologized for “going too far.”

Driver Tony Stewart got the last word in many reports on the hoax, saying, "When you’re dealing with a nation that is going through tough economic times and you have major manufacturers and millions of people [who] are relying on them and you see that happen…. I'm even smart enough not to do that, and I do a lot of stupid stuff."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #6

Just as the dotcom bubble was preparing to burst, Esquire's April 2000 issue introduced readers to the latest too-good-to-be-true Internet start-up, FreeWheelz.com, the brainchild, of course, of a Stanford MBA.

The article, by Ted C. Fishman, explained the company's business model: free cars for drivers who were willing to turn them into "rolling, bumper-to-bumper, top-to-tire" billboards for such products as StayFresh sanitary napkins. In order to rack up "eyeballs" for the ads, participants were required to drive at least 25,000 miles a year and incentivized to create "rush-hour rubbernecking delays," presumably by staging accidents. Not every would-be driver qualified: Applicants had to complete an online form with more than 600 questions, requiring an average of seven hours.

In a newspaper column written soon after the magazine appeared, Fishman marveled at how many people had apparently taken the article seriously: "Was I foolish in thinking my prank was a joke when in this age of goofy businesses and paper zillionaires, wacky ideas are the new Klondike? Maybe I should have just called for investors."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #5

Admittedly inspired by Sports Illustrated’s famous Sidd Finch hoax of 1985, Sporting Classics magazine followed suit a dozen years later, reporting on the supposed catch of a world’s record largemouth bass in its March-April 1997 issue.

Editor Chuck Wechsler attributed at least part of the delay to technical difficulties. "I couldn't do it until we had technology to make a 13-pound, 4-ounce Florida bass look like a 22-pound, 7-ounce bass," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The photo in question shows the magazine's circulation manager's dad, under an assumed name, proudly holding the fictitious fish.

Perhaps borrowing a page from professional con artists, who know to keep their claims reasonably plausible, the magazine's record bass was just 3 ounces over the previous recordholder. A 22-ton, 7-ounce bass, for example, would have been pushing it.  

Not everyone was impressed, however. "One Ohio columnist said it was the single greatest breach of journalistic integrity he had ever witnessed," Wechsler told the Associated Press. "I wanted to tell him to get a life."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #4

Those wags at MIT''s Technology Review may have been as surprised as anyone when a prank article in their April 1984 issue hit the news wires and made headlines all over the world. Scientists in the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the article claimed, had successfully mixed cells from a woolly mammoth (extinct for some 10,000 years) and a contemporary elephant to create a creature that was half and half.

The magazine's editor, John I. Mattill, explained the hoax in his October issue, by which time the tale, if not the animal, had taken on a life of its own.

But the story doesn't end there. In a rare case of life imitating hoax, the New York Times reported in September 2021 that a team of scientists and entrepreneurs led by Harvard Medical School biologist George Church had formed a company to bring back the woolly mammoth by editing elephant DNA. 

Can the hotheaded naked ice borer (to be covered in a future installment) be far behind?

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #3

Even computer magazines like to cut loose now and then, as PC/Computing's John C. Dvorak demonstrated in an April 1994 column, decrying a bill he said was nearing passage in the U.S. Senate. "In fact," he warned, "it may already be too late to stop."

SB 040194 (get it?) would make it illegal to use the Internet while intoxicated.

Dvorak invoked such names as Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer, and Pat Moynihan and offered the theory that the legislators knew so little about technology that they believed the Information Highway was an actual road in danger from drunk drivers.

After the uptick in irate calls to Senate offices, PC/Computing Editor-in-Chief Paul Somerson, offered an explanation for the fuss, saying, "There's a lot of resentment and fear about government intrusion."

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #2

The most successful, or at least best hyped, magazine hoax of the late 20^th century came in 1985 when, in an issue of Sports Illustrated cover-dated April 1, writer George Plimpton introduced the world to a 28-year-old, New York Mets pitching phenom named Hayden "Sidd" Finch. Among other screaming clues to his inauthenticity, Sidd (for Siddhartha) was a Harvard dropout, a French horn virtuoso, and, one source believed, an aspiring Buddhist monk. He was also capable of throwing a baseball at an unheard-of 168 m.p.h., despite the fact that had never played the game before.

The story, 14 pages in length, was embellished with photos of the supposed Finch as well as quotes from real-life Mets, including manager Davey Johnson, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, then-rookie Lenny Dykstra, and owner Nelson Doubleday. Stottlemyre called Finch’s unusual wind-up and delivery—which one batter likened to Goofy’s pitching in a Disney cartoon— as "the most awesome thing that has ever happened in baseball."

Apparently some people were fooled by the story, and many went along with the joke.

Asked to comment once the hoax had been revealed, SI’s managing editor, Mark Mulvoy, explained that, "I publish 550 stories a year. So much of what we do has to do with things like drugs, salaries and now, point-shaving, things we have to do. But for once I wanted to have fun."

He added: "We've never done anything like this and probably never will again."

The “Curious Case of Sidd Finch” is available on the magazine's website, along with a recent reminiscence by two of the key players.

 

Great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes, #1

Back in the days when the world took print media seriously, some newspaper and magazine editors couIdn’t resist putting that at risk by perpetrating the occasional hoax. Usually they did it under the cover of April 1, but some seem to have gone ahead whenever an idea occurred to them. Typically these pranks were all in good fun and did no damage to people, animals, or editors’ careers. Today, in honor of April 1, we begin a series about the great (and not-all-that-great) magazine hoaxes.

In its first April issue for 1971, the Saturday Review published a letter from one K. Jason Sitewell, calling attention to a bill in Congress that ostensibly proposed to limit the size of private parks but was really intended to abolish golf courses and ultimately destroy the sport itself. The congressman sponsoring the bill, the letter writer contended, had a burning hatred of golf, which he blamed for the death of both his grandfather (who died of exasperation in a sand trap) and his father (dead after driving 19 balls into a water hazard on a par-3 hole).

The letter drew concern and outrage in the halls of Congress as well as the golfing community before the Wall Street Journal revealed the hoax and Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins confessed to being Sitewell.

"The reason for the letter is that it is part of the Saturday Review's editorial philosophy to place the highest value on laughter," Cousins wrote after the incident. “SR is a serious magazine and it deals with serious issues in a serious way, but it tries to make a distinction between being serious and being solemn. In the catalog of human assets, few things provide people with greater strength than the love of life, of which the ability to laugh is a prime manifestation."

Cousins went on to become a leading proponent of laughter as a medical cure, particularly in his popular 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness.