Note: Sometimes fake news stories are built around legitimate stories with fake elements thrown in here and there. The fake elements in the post below are for comedic effect and they're fairly obvious. The folks who really know how to write fake news sometimes use similar techniques. However, they are much more subtle about it.
Fake news has been around in the United States
since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Actually, fake
news was being produced before that. Long before he became a statesman, Ben
Franklin worked as an apprentice in a print shop owned by his older brother
James, or Jimbo, as Ben preferred to call him when he was out of earshot. True
story!
The shop printed programs for the Boston Red
Sox, menus for Legal Seafood, and also published the New England Courant
newspaper. Unbeknownst to his older, and apparently less clever, brother, Ben Franklin
wrote for the New England Courant using the pen name Silence Dogood. Like the Huffington
Post, the Courant was very receptive to free content, whether it came by email
or in an envelope slid under the office door. Mrs. Dogood was popular with the
readers and it took James Franklin years to figure out her true identity.
