April 8, 2008

It seems April Fool’s Day stories are popular with readers. Well, I didn’t have time to check across the world, but on April 1 I noticed several “best-of” articles at the top of the “most read” lists across the Danish media sites. (Here’s the Telegraph’s roundup of U.K. spoof news from April 1.)

By now we have all laughed about — and forgotten — most of those stories. The articles are no longer on cover pages, and soon they will be replaced on the “most read” lists by articles about war and real estate prices.

But, I was just wondering… did everyone remember to clean up their archives?

April Fool’s Day articles are usually not mean, but they are meant to deceive. I noticed that most of the Danish articles I checked have been updated with very visible “April Fools” introductions, to prevent misunderstandings in the years to come.

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Ernst Poulsen is commissioning newseditor at www.dr.dk - the website of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Prior to that he was news- and webeditor at Copenhagen…
Ernst Poulsen

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