LA Times Defends Fake News Wraparound

Friday, 02 July 2010 | by Pat's Picks

Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein thinks the paper’s readers are sophisticted enough to understand Thursday’s “King Kong” ad was just a gag. The “news” came in the form of a wraparound delivering fake stories describing King Kong’s path of destruction through Southern California. But the “advertisement” disclaimer does little to take away from the fact that the section was designed to be confusingly similar to the paper’s regular news pages. The Wrap, which posted the image above, has the whole story.

For comparison, here’s the design of the real LATExtra news pages: