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WSJ Spoof Ticks off Murdoch

A parody of the Wall Street Journal that features a full-page spread of a topless Ann Coulter has miffed News Corp. execs to the point that they’re apparently attempting to keep the tabloid off the stands.

In Los Angeles, where the parody hit stands a little earlier than scheduled, a WSJ representative was said to be making the rounds, snapping up every issue. According to The New York Times’ Richard Perez-Pena, a worker at a newsstand was chatting with a customer when a man in a shirt with a WSJ logo came by asking if they had seen a paper that looked “sort of like The Journal.”

They located a stack of the papers, and the man, paying with a corporate AmEx card, bought them all. At first he said there needed to be a correction made, but then said the paper wasn’t published by the Journal.

The tabloid was led by editor in chief Tony Hendra, who headed up a 1982 version called Off the Wall Street Journal.

Much of this installment is devoted to poking fun at the Journal’s new owner, News Corp., and its chief, Rupert Murdoch.

The publishers are running a parallel YouTube campaign, with a video that showsa fake Rupert Murdoch reacting to the My WSJ news (via the Huffington Post). More can be found at WSJparody.com, a website which describes the parody as “a sizzling satire of the people responsible for the staggering mess we’re in.”

“Laugh away your great depression with cutting-edge comedy from the likes of Andy Borovitz, Richard Belzer, Terry Jones, Tony Hendra, writers from the Onion, the Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, the New Yorker, and yes, the Wall Street Journal itself,” it goes on.