Twenty six years between issues. That’s the time that has elapsed since a group of young American journalists put out a parody of the Wall Street Journal called Off The Wall Street Journal.
It was a sell-out back in 1982, selling more than 650,000 copies, and earned its editor, Tony Hendra, a former editor of The National Lampoon and Spy Magazine, the cover of Newsweek.
Now he has done it again. Sparked by the take-over of the WSJ by Rupert Murdoch, Hendra and a new team of writers have put out a second issue, this one called My Wall Street Journal.
It’s selling fast on newsstands and bookstores in the US, even though its costs the equivalent of more than £2. That’s more than twice the price of a regular issue of the WSJ.
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But a regular issue of the WSJ is not likely to carry such headlines as: Bush Abolishes Death and Taxes, Could Hillary Win As An African-American Man and Muslims Cheer as Mad-Pig Disease Sweeps Europe.
There is also a take-off of the Page Six gossip page in Murdoch’s other New York paper, The NY Post. It’s labelled Page Sex. The 24-page tabloid also has a double page advertorial of a bare-bottomed “Bare Sterns” – a take-off of the Wall Street company at the centre of the recent economic fall-off – urging Americans: ‘Go ahead – Spank Us.”
Murdoch himself is not spared. One story is headlined: British Royal Family Sold to International Ambassador of Money. Who’s that? The head of News Corp, of course , exacting revenge for the fact his forebears were transported to Australia on the orders of George III.
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Buying the British Royal Family, in any event, says the cod newspaper, makes good business sense – and allows “Queen Wendy’ to be pictured on new British and Commonwealth currency.
The New York Times reported that in at least one city, Los Angeles, someone wearing a shirt with a WSJ logo on it bought every copy that was on sale at one newsstand – and paid for it with a WSJ credit card.
Hendra said: “Go ahead. We printed 350,000 copies. If they buy them all we could print more.”
If the cod paper is a sell out, it could make about a million dollars which as Hendra gleefully points out is about as much as Murdoch loses every week on the New York Post.”
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