newspapers

There it was on the front page, in the large, trustworthy Times New Roman font: “Iraq War Ends.”

“Free special edition of The New York Times!” four hawkers, dressed in very real-looking New York Times vendor aprons, cried outside Penn Station, as they handed out a decidedly fake paper.

Some New Yorkers who stopped to read the article, with the subhead “Troops to Return Immediately,” were initially taken in by the hoax.

‘Coming Home’

“All the Republicans are out and now [the troops] are coming home,” said Steven Franco, a 32-year-old barber from Freeport, Long Island.  “I used to be a Republican and now I’m a Democrat.  I think it’s great.”

Franco – and many other readers – were quickly disappointed to learn that the paper, dated July 4, 2009, was the product of an elaborate prank.

The stunt was believed to be the work of The Yes Men, a band of self-described “impostors” whose mission is to expose “the nastiness of powerful evildoers,” according to the group’s website.

A press release claimed 1.2 million copies of the paper were printed at a half dozen presses, and distributed by thousands of volunteers. The paper was written by 30 working journalists, said one writer, who went by the pseudonym Wilfred Sassoon.

The effort included a takeoff on The Times’ website and a satirical video chronicling the making of the fake paper.

A Yes Men spokesman, though, refused to confirm or deny the group’s involvement.

A Times spokeswoman said officials at the newspaper were trying to learn more about the fake edition.

A Liberal Utopia

The hoax paper’s 14 pages portray America as a liberal utopia, where the weather forecast calls for, “Strong leftward winds” and the headlines include “National Health Insurance Act Passes.” The motto is “All the News We Hope to Print” – a takeoff on The Times’ “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

There are fake ads, too – including a McDonald’s spot featuring Che Guevara that declares, “We’re lovin’ revolution.” And the paper has a scathing piece lampooning Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who was not immediately reachable for comment.

Some of the other bylines include dead notables of days past: Elizabeth Fry, a 19th Century English prison reformer got credit for “Prison Industry Looks Within,” while Samuel Fielden, a socialist-anarchist who was convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing, was the “author” of a piece headlined, “Popular Pressure Ushers Recent Progressive Tilt.”

Future Shock

At Union Square, two of the hawkers – who called themselves M.L. Mencken and News Void – handed New Yorkers the paper, asking, “Care for a special edition of The New York Times from the future for you?”

Some New Yorkers appreciated the joke – and the pointed sentiments behind it.

“It’s the news we’d like to see,” said Andree Stolte, a writer-performer from Midtown.

“I’m lovin’ it. I’m not sure if it’s poking fun at the fact that Obama is going to be a cure-all or realizing the problems for the future. Obama’s a great man, but he’s not Xanax,” said Liz Marotti, who sells her paintings in Union Square.

In a recent letter to Indian immigrants, Barack Obama wrote of the “special meaning” Diwali, the Festival Lights, holds for him as a “celebration of illumination over ignorance.” His letter is reproduced on the front page of the current issue of Desi Talk, a New York City newspaper.

Inside the same issue, an article examines whether Obama’s race will deter Indian-American voters.  The headline asks, “Remember everyone in India wanted a fair-skinned spouse?”  But another article in the same issue predicts, “It is quite likely that the ghost of ‘Bradley effect’ will finally be laid to rest Nov. 4.”

Not to be outdone, a competing New York Indian paper promises on its front page, “Vote for your favorite candidate(s) and party on November 4, 2008 and get a FREE subscription to News India-Times for next 3 months.”

Electoral Interest

New York City’s growing ethnic press, usually devoted to community-specific concerns, is riveted to the election.

The weekly Haitian Times, the largest Haitian paper in America, is abuzz over the role of Haitian-American labor leader Patrick Gaspard as Obama’s national political director.  A recent article notes that a new advocacy group, the Haitian American National Alliance, “has borrowed Obama’s rallying cry ‘Yes we can’ or ‘Wi nou kapab,’ as its own slogan.”

La Tribuna Hispana USA, the largest East Coast Spanish-language weekly, endorses Obama in its current issue, as do smaller papers like Ecuador News, headquartered in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Socialism Charge

But Republican accusations against Obama ring true to Vladimir Chernomorsky, an editor at the Russian-language daily Novoye Russkoye Slovo. “We feel that Obama is kind of like a socialist” he said.  “His ideas about healthcare, taxes and the spread of wealth sound like socialism.”  His paper endorsed McCain.

The editor of an Italian paper, meanwhile, is looking for a candidate to replicate Europe’s health care, school and pension systems.  “We are Europeans and we feel that the European social structure is more advanced,” said Andrea Mantineo, the editor-in-chief at Italian daily America Oggi.  “Obama’s plan is closer to the European system.”

Martineo’s paper endorsed Obama – in a front-page editorial – despite his belief that “most Italians in New York are Republicans.”

Some immigrants come from countries that have loomed large during the campaign season. In August, The Forward, a Jewish weekly, hired a Washington-based reporter, Brett Lieberman, to cover the election.  His dispatch in the current issue analyzes Gallup poll data and finds that younger Jews, while leaning towards Obama, counter-intuitively lean less strongly towards him than their elders.  He attributes this to a young American population of more conservative Orthodox and Russian Jews.

For the last six months, Dr. Syed F. Hasnat, a scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, has been writing weekly 1,500-word election-themed articles for the Pakistan Post and its sister English-language paper, Generation Next.

Big News

In the current issue, he parses the candidates’ arguments during the presidential debates on Pakistan. He praises Obama’s criticism of the United States’ support of Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf, approvingly quoting Obama saying in the first debate that “we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were undemocratic.”

The Pakistan Post’s editor, Mohammed Farooqi, said in an interview that as long as election results are in by 2 a.m. election night, he will have the news on the cover of next week’s issue, which hits streets the day after the election.

“I think everyone’s waiting for this election,” Farooqi said.  “Everywhere in the world.”