Seattle biz newspaper duped by restaurant’s April Fool’s prank

Jim Romenesko reports that the Puget Sound Business Journal, an American City Business Journals paper in Seattle, fell for an April Fool’s joke by a local restaurant that sent out a release touting its new chowder kiosks.

Editor George Erb wrote to Romenesko and stated, “How did we discover that we were duped? Give some credit to Curt Woodward, a former Associated Press reporter who is now a senior editor at Xconomy, the online news site for tech and life sciences. I had paused to tweet out some of our online stories, and saw Woodward’s tweet expressing skepticism about our Ivar’s post.

“I called up our story, and realized almost immediately that we had fallen for a hoax. Ivar’s has a history of April Fool’s marketing pranks. Plus, the press release was billed as an advancer for an announcement two days later, on Sunday — April 1. That really set off the alarm bells. We pulled down the post as fast as we could.

“No question, we fell for an old-fashioned April Fool’s joke, with embarrassing results. We should have approached the Ivar’s press release with greater skepticism, and done more to double check the facts. Yes, critical thinking matters. It was an important lesson for us.

“By the way, I often walk to Ivar’s takeout window for lunch. The restaurant taught us a hard lesson, but I still like their fish and chips.”

Read more here. Talking Biz News notes that a number of its readers fell for the Motley Fool April Fool’s joke as well judging from the reader comments.