When All the Zingers Were Fit to Print

Rusty Unger, 74, former film executive columnist for The Village Voice I was talking to my friend Chris Cerf, saying it would be so great to do a parody of The New York Times while it was on strike. He said, “My friend Tony Hendra [an editor at National Lampoon magazine] and I were just talking about the same thing.”

Christopher Cerf, 78, former songwriter for “Sesame Street” I remember I’d been thinking of Victor Navasky’s parodies of The New York Post and The Daily News ever since they came out. He took advantage of an opportunity that the world handed him of a newspaper strike [in the early ’60s]. I always thought that was brilliant, and I just filed that fact away. I remember Victor saying that they couldn’t do The Times because they couldn’t match the typeface.

As we talked about this, we got quite excited. We thought, “I wonder if we could get some of our friends, writers that we know, involved.”

Unger Between the three of us, we probably knew every writer in New York — and, you know, all the funny people.

Frances FitzGerald, 79, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Rusty would call people up and say, “We don’t know what we’re doing exactly, but come help us.”

Cerf The real fun was when we began to find that all the people from The Times wanted to do it.

Steven Crist, 63, former Times horse racing writer I graduated in June of ’78 and went to work at The Times as a copy boy, which was the lowest rung, entry-level job. After the paper went on strike, I started going to the racetrack and tried to make a living betting on the horses. And then along came Not The New York Times.

Richard Yeend, 75, former Times designer I had no food at the time. I figured this might be an opportunity to have a free meal. I learned that was exactly what this was.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/reader-center/times-satire-history.html