Crain's Chicago duped by April Fool's gag

Lorene Yue of Crain’s Chicago Business writes Wednesday that the weekly business newspaper fell for an April Fool’s joke from a local magazine that put out its latest issue and a release stating that Donald Trump had bought a majority stake in the publication.

Yue wrote, “Crain’s was unable to reach the representative named on Time Out’s press release so it based its report on the release, which also was part of the joke.

“‘We thought the press release was part of the parody,’ Mr. Barnett said. ‘The concept of a parody is to make it look as real as possible.’

“The story was deleted from Crain’s site Tuesday night.

“The cover of the Time Out Chicago issue is a tribute to an April 1988 cover of the defunct magazine Spy, said Editor Frank Sennett, who was a fan of the satirical publication.”

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