Really?

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

As I wrote last week, that week’s April Fools’ Day spoof issue is one of my favorite things we do every year. Writing Onion-style satire pieces about local issues is an opportunity to flex an unusual set of muscles.

I was surprised to hear intelligent people wonder aloud, “Really?” after seeing last week’s cover boasting that the newspaper was made of “recycled marijuana” and could get you high. Because, yeah, right, we’re going to give away free pot, and we’re just going to leave it all around town where children can find it.

We’ve heard a couple of funny anecdotes about readers dropping pages after trying to open the newspaper sideways—the little prank we plotted all along.

But the strangest, most hilarious reactions have been the outraged letters, comments and other responses we’ve received in reaction to “City of Reno approved plan to demolish classic Reno recordings.” The piece, which we thought was clearly satirical even without a disclaimer, which it had, claimed that the Reno City Council approved a plan by an out-of-state record label to “destroy every known vinyl copy” of classic songs that mention Reno or were recorded by a well-known Reno band.

“How does this make sense to anyone?” wrote one reader. “This is history. I am astounded [that] anyone feels it is OK to destroy these vinyl recordings! At the very least auction them off or donate them to someone who will value them.”

Of course, sometimes the point of satire is to demonstrate the ridiculousness of real life. And the fact that some readers totally bought into that story says something very troubling about our current city council.

And for more about an ongoing development that inspired that piece, check out this week’s feature story on page 11.