Today, hundreds of college (and commercial) newspapers will share in the fun of April Fool’s Day editions, filled with satirical pieces poking fun at local news, politics and organizations. It’s an opportunity for many journalists to take a break from hard news and learn to be a bit creative and maybe even funny.
However, this year, there are several reasons our staff has decided not to produce the annual Bullshit edition. These reasons include fiscal responsibility and the mentality that producing a satire issue affects the credibility of the newspaper as a whole. We want our readers to trust our front page and the information we provide, regardless of the day of the year.
At the beginning of the school year, The Bulletin switched from a twice a week publication to printing once a week. The reasons for this switch involved our doubling printing costs as we moved to a new printer at The Lawrence Journal-World. Our former printer, The Emporia Gazette, had decommissioned its presses.
Since our primary goal as a paper is to provide accurate news to the campus and the community, we decided we could not, in good conscience, replace our usual weekly issue with The Bullshit edition.
For as long as anyone we’ve talked to can remember, The Bullshit has come out on April Fool’s Day. It is a collection of satirical news articles, photos and opinion pieces entirely made up by our staff. The issue pokes fun at recent campus and local events and provides a refreshing sense of humor you don’t normally see within our paper.
We are certainly disappointed that we will not have the chance to publish The Bullshit this year. It is an Emporia State tradition and easily one of our favorite events of the year. But in this economic climate, and with print editions already limited, it just didn’t seem right.
We are currently tossing around ideas to include satire pieces in the regular edition of the paper in the entertainment section, which we have done in the past.
We are not the creators of this style of reporting either. Anyone who says this kind of journalism has no place in society should look into publications like The Onion or The Harvard Lampoon. Both of these are comical reviews that poke fun at everything from religion to politics to journalism itself.
In the past, The Bullshit has been a reminder not only to the campus community but The Bulletin staff as well to not take ourselves too seriously. To poke a little fun at ourselves. To give ourselves a break.
As always, we welcome your input on our decision, as it can help us make decisions in the future that reflect the will of the student body. And who knows, perhaps someday The Bullshit will make another appearance.
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Just for the record, the Bullshit was a longstanding tradition that disappeared many years ago. It returned in 2000 and has been around ever since. In some years since 2000, the staff paid for the issue out of their own pockets. In other years, special advertising was sold. When you want something, you can make it happen.
Of course, the internet would never be an option… I mean who would publish news where millions of people could read it for server fees? That kind of amateurish behavior should be saved for the WSJ.