Funny bones

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review. When we were preparing for our annual April Fools’ Day issue two years ago, we decided to include a story with the headline, “Newspaper decides against publishing annual April Fools’ Day issue because satire is dead.” We sat around the newsroom joking about how it’s got to be hard for publications like the Onion to stay relevant when the real news is so much stranger than anything a person could make up. I think that’s more true now than ever. In fact, I kind of wish we’d waited until this year to run that story.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy this annual edition of the paper. We certainly have fun with it—though I don’t consider myself funny. I’ve got what I think of as an NPR-type sense of humor, think A Prairie Home Companion. I think my colleagues, however, are pretty funny. I laughed aloud a few times reading their stories, and I hope you will too. We’ve included a bit of something for everyone, poking fun at issues both local and national.

My friends who know that the paper does an annual April Fools’ Day issue have also been pitching me their funny story ideas. They were all funnier than mine, but I didn’t use any of them because if felt like cheating. One friend suggested the story “Tesla and SpaceX pioneer Elon Musk teams up with Reno City Council and announces plan to return Space Whale to space.” Another suggested a story about midtown sidewalks, which he thinks will take up most of the street when construction is finished. None of my story ideas were that good. Maybe it’s because I love Reno too much to make any good jabs at it. I think it’s because some people, myself included, just aren’t funny.