News-Record.com

A reader called today to give us grief us grief for the photos about gang tags that ran on our editorial page today. She thought we were promoting tagging in the sense that gang members would be motivated to paint gang symbols more often if they thought their work would be published.

I bring that up because one reason we don't write much about April Fool's pranks is for the same reason: they may reinforce the prankster and give them credit when they deserve, well, none. Riding to work this morning, I listened to one radio show doing an interview with a government official that sounded legitimate until you thought about the premise for about two seconds and remembered what day it is.

We aren't alone in our fuddyduddiness. Is that a sign of good sense or paternalistic news judgment? Wouldn't writing about the goofy pranks lend a bit of desperately needed humor to the paper? Or would it contribute to the "dumbing down" sentiment people sometimes have?

We don't pull the April Fool's wool over our readers' eyes with our own pranks because we don't want to contribute to the confusion. Besides, we've found it is hard to commit humor in the newspaper. The comics page is proof of that. (That's a little joke.) We aren't alone, either.

Of course, it could also be that most of the April Fool's pranks are not all that interesting or newsworthy. A good, public one -- say, getting a news release published that said President Bush endorsed Kay Hagan over Elizabeth Dole or that Terry Grier had changed his mind about leaving -- now that would be a different story.