Joke's on you

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

It's April Fool's Day here at the World Headquarters of the Reno News & Review. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to pull a joke that will work retroactively for readers. So how would that work, anyway? Would it be permissible for me to set up the joke today, but have it spring when you read this Editor's Note from April 4-10, or to tell you that the joke was set up in the April Fool's issue that ran last week?

All right. For those who didn't believe the story we ran last week that suggested the new parking meter stations might be working, and everyone who parks downtown should go ahead and pay for their time using our public streets, it's possible we were joking. And for those who believed us when we said we believe Marc Johnson when he said the University of Nevada, Reno has no secret plans for developing the university farm over by Wolfpack Meats, well, it was the April Fool's issue.

And, for the individuals who read last week's Editor's Note and interpreted it as saying that the newsprint version of the RN&R is going away, I'd just like to say that I appreciate your kind words thanking me for my years of contributions to Reno culture, and I'd like to emphasize that had I actually written that, it would have been an awesome April Fool's Day joke for today. What I actually wrote was that for local newsprint newspapers to exist in the future, local newsprint newspapers must accentuate what they do well: stories about local people and events that are paid for by ads that run next to the local content on newsprint, so readers get the information they crave, and advertisers get the results they demand. I also said that newspapers—even free ones—should consider ways to give print newspapers exclusive content. While I personally intend to learn how to make apps for tablets, the whole organization is absolutely committed to the print newspaper. The internet'll take this newspaper when it can pry it from my cold, dead hands.