NZ Herald launches spoof news site to poke fun at ‘fluffy’ competitors
APN Online’s NZ Herald has created a fake news website aimed at poking fun at online competitors only interested in linkbait type stories.
Officially launching on Monday, NZ Notworth News will be running for the next month.
It includes trivial takes on stories such as the idea that blogging makes you cleverer, before offering a link through to a more intelligent version of the story on the NZ Herald.
The site – devised by APN NZ’s creative agency M&C Saatchi – also offers the weather-prediction skills of TreAnn Chalmers.
And before the spoof was revealed, the site also launched an introduction to the Notworth News TV team.
APN Online’s GM Spencer Bailey said: “By forming an entire news team that parodies the other kinds of news available to the New Zealand public, we were able to highlight the quality of our content and that not all news is created equal.”
M&C Saatchi’s CD Dave King added: “A lot of Kiwis read or hear a news story and accept that it is true, without putting a reality check over it. Yet look at many of the ‘news’ providers available to the New Zealand public and you quickly realise that they have credibility issues. Some are fluffy, others sensationalise, while there are a bundle that add a huge right wing spin.”
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Their competitors must be getting somewhere to have a response like this from APN.
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The NZ Notworth News weather girl is like the Michael Lynch of the trade journalism world
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Like the overall idea – has lots lof potential – but the execution just isn’t that funny. Maybe you have to be from NZ?
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Nice idea, similar to The Onion but they could actually create a site that achieves the aims but uses real stories. Fark.com has been doing it for years.
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