Retro Yakking

Amid the ongoing News of the World phone-tapping row, a war has broken out within the British newspaper industry over the use of wholly fabricated stories and appropriated content.

In particular, critics are alleging that The Sun newspaper will face a crisis when Teletext closes down next January after it was found the majority of their stories were copy-paste jobs from the digital news service.

We would like to assure our readers that nothing will change in January, except we will begin to appropriate content from BBCi. Although it is appreciably worse than Teletext, it will soften the blow for our regular readers somewhat.

In time, we hope to steal content from such media services as The Guardian and Telegraph, so there is absolutely nothing to worry about, at least not if you don’t mind reading a load of stories about asylum seekers and middle class nonsense. — Sun spokesman Alf Hart

Less than seven days ago, it was reported that small time weblog Retro Yakking had been sourcing content from popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. These allegations have since been proven false, but the heated battle of the gutter rags continues to rage as tabloids and internet blogs continue to jostle for position in an increasingly tough economic climate.

People want made up stories now more than ever. They want escapism, not the gritty, boring details of reality that these other ‘papers’ provide. Who cares if we make stuff up? That’s old news. Find something else to talk about. — Daily Star editor and social commentator Don Key

Retro Yakking has recently drawn criticism from various sources regarding the decreasing quality of its articles.

It’s just stuff about Andrew Flintoff clones and crummy battles between no-mark newspapers day after day. At least our fabricated nonsense is original. — Don Key

The war is set to rage on for many weeks, if not months or years. Despite the fact nobody cares, papers continue to run disparaging stories about each others’ editors.

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