‘Inquirer’ Uses Font Size Usually Reserved For Terrorist Attacks To Tell Us Circulation Is Up

You can click to enlarge.

The above is a special pullout only for today in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Not only did the paper project pigs onto the side of the building last night, but in today’s Inky there is a four-page special section complete with charts, graphs and man-on-the-street interviews.

Oh, and seven articles about the Inquirer’s circulation going up and how pigs do indeed fly. One of which quotes a person using the phrase, “Well, I’ll be damned,” which would probably be cut out of the regular paper (”[darned]“) had an individual in a story said it.

My favorite part is the chart on the front page. After losing 40,000 readers the past two years, this year circ has gone up just over 2,000.

A note on Page 2 of the pullout notes: “While the information in this edition regarding The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the newspaper industry is accurate, all other information (including but not limited to stories, graphics, artwork and photographs) in this edition is fictitious and satirical. All references to individuals are fictitious, and not intended to refer to any natural persons, whether living or dead. No pigs were harmed in the production of this work.” Yeah.

Now, the section, as you can see, looks exactly like a real news section except it says “ADVERTISEMENT” at the top. We people are a stupid bunch, but I don’t see how someone could see this section as real. But I’m not going to overestimate the intelligence of the average Inquirer reader — especially a new subscriber!

But, ah, really? Wow. Just wow. My brain just exploded even harder than it did while reading that Kevin Michael piece. I’ll try to do a little round up of the inside pages later today if I recover.

Earlier today: Japanimation Fighting Pigs On Side Of Inquirer Building