Vanity Fair duped by satirical article in Penn student newspap 

Vanity Fair duped by satirical article in Penn student newspaper

published a story about actress Emma Watson’s decision to undertake graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in English literature. The piece was based on a story in the student-run Daily Pennsylvanian. Which is now publishing its annual joke issue.

Actress Emma Watson. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

The helpful signage at the front of that headline, mind you, doesn’t debut with the story itself. For a number of hours, in other words, the Watson-chooses-Penn “scoop” reads like honest-to-goodness news. “We change it halfway through the day,” said Matt Mantica, the executive editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian. “That’s how they got confused.”

The Daily Pennsylvanian, which receives no university funding and was founded in 1885, has been publishing joke issues since 1962. As the newspaper notes in a history of the gag issue, sometimes people just don’t get the joke: “One year, an associate dean in the College called up the provost to ask why he had not been told that the university had been kicked out of the Ivy League.”

“Even a lot of staff and professors enjoy it and comment on it,” said Mantica.

As Philly.com has pointed out, the Watson piece carried some classic satirical red flags, including this highfalutin quote from one “Catherine Bennet” of the university’s English department: “I think Emma’s beliefs mirror those of the English Department here at Penn. We strive to foster a challenging, inclusive and supportive departmental culture that not only focuses on the core of the subject but also its ramifications and connections to other areas of study.” “Catherine Bennet” comes straight from Jane Austen.

There was no intent to punk Vanity Fair or any other publication out there, assures Mantica. “Our assumption is kind of — I would expect that another publication wouldn’t just take it from one source, that it would at least try and do some minimal fact-checking or check our sources and that didn’t happen,” he said, noting that he reached out to Vanity Fair after he saw the piece.

Another story in the joke issue alleged that AirPennNet, the university’s wireless system, was banning Netflix over bandwidth-hogging considerations. According to Mantica, a Daily Pennsylvanian alumnus now working for ABC News checked in with the newspaper to confirm that the piece was a joke. “His colleagues picked it up and were excited about it,” said Mantica.

Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts.

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