April Fools' Cover Hits WW Boxes

We did double-takes all over town this morning when we passed WW boxes that had the above wraparound above as the cover instead of the one we put out yesterday (the image below)



Turns out Portland Rising Tide is the culprit behind the April Fools' prank, boasting on its web site that volunteers "blasted the city with over 3,000 fake newspaper covers wrapping the Willamette Week. With content including an interview with Bigfoot about pipeline plans through Mt. Hood and a chart explaining the Columbia River Crossing project as understood by Glen [sic] Beck. The action was part of Fossil Fools Day, a national day-of-action with the tag-line, 'Pull a prank that packs a punch' meant to inspire playful actions targeting the fossil fuel industry."

And the environmental activists went on to write

The action was pulled off to provide light-hearted education to the public and simultaneously call out those corporations and projects that have been using an elaborate public relations campaign to “green” their image.

Ryan Caraway with Portland Rising Tide explained the action, “Our region is threatened by a number of projects that would increase our dependency on fossil fuels as well as threaten some of the most pristine areas left in this country. Unfortunately, we feel that we don't see enough critical media surrounding these issues and we wanted to change that – at least for one night.”

"We think WW is a perfect example of certain media that's really not covering stories and issues the community cares about," Cascadia Rising Tide member Chris Noble said this afternoon.

Noble could not point to other media outlets he said had done a better job on covering those issues. He said he had not read this piece we wrote on LNG (or this one). But he says he did read this piece on the Columbia River Crossing. Noble says "it's basically our opinion that Willamette Week is taking the side of industry." Asked what was pro-industry in WW's coverage, Noble said he would like the chance to re-read the piece.