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As the day of the 111th Big Game dawned over Berkeley, minions of deception were already hard at work distributing copies of a crappy counterfeit version of the Daily Cal’s super-awesome GameDay issue. As the confusingly unconvincing fake issues circulated, it became increasingly clear that these were not the work of respected (snicker) rivals from across the Bay, but the work of … well, we’re not really sure who–or what–was behind the puzzling prank.
A curious combination of old, wrongly-attributed actual Daily Cal articles, mostly-correct stats and a completely fabricated cover story about Jahvid Best being unable to play in the Big Game due to an ankle injury sustained from a “freak accident stepping off the team bus,” leads us to believe that someone wanted us to actually believe that Best was out. Someone with a lot of disposable cash …
While the obvious answer to the question of whodunnit would, thus, seem to be the Stanford Daily, we like to believe that even they would do a better job of making fun of us. Though, it didn’t really seem like humor was the goal, anyway. Some had the nerve to suggest the perpetrator was the Daily Cal itself, or perhaps the Clog, to both of which we say, “Puh-lease!” And scoff.
If you have any information about who has enough time and monies lying around to do such a thing, please contact us at clog@dailycal.org, ASAP. Because–take it from us–printing stuff ain’t cheap …
Image Source: Jill Cowan
Cal’s student paper plays hoax on Bears fans [San Jose Mercury News]
Comments:
Nov 28, 2008 at 4:15 pm
After laying out a few pages in something like the Daily Cal format, and, of course, distributing it before any actual papers arrived, we figured we should chime into this conversation. We’re saddened you didn’t find our work particularly funny. That having been said, have a few suggestions:
1) The Helvetica headlines in the Daily Cal are a bit repetitive and look a bit like some of the buildings on your campus – old. Vary your fonts a bit. Maybe Minion Pro, Garamond, something a bit different. You can stay with the serifs if you feel like you need to, but it’s 2008.
2) The tracking on “The Daily Californian” is a mess. Standardize it. It’ll be a noticeable improvement.
3) Bolding the names of players in captions is a plus. We wish the Stanford Daily would follow your lead.
4) We liked your actual Big Game edition. It was interesting. But it looked like it was produced in 1970. In particular, the straight blue and gold lines running across the whole paper. We’d recommend you to the Stanford Daily website, but it’s unlikely you’d take our advice. But this, at least, has a few good examples: http://studentpress.org/acp/winners/npm08.html
Lastly, Jahvid Best is actually a hell of a football player. Cheers.
Nov 25, 2008 at 10:39 pm
at least Jahvid best has a good giant printed photo of himself that he can pass out to his parents.
what a waste of money, and what poor judgment. and all on something really unoriginal (recycled pranks, anyone? those aren’t really fun. i wonder where all the geniuses went this year).