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Josh Whicker, a schoolteacher and former football star, currently makes mischief by writing bogus and humorous stories on his Web site, The Hoosier Gazette. -- Sam Riche / The Star   Hoaxes in history Other 'news' that has been swallowed: 1930: Loch Ness Monster sighted, Scottish Highlands. Loch Ness becomes tourist destination. 1938: Martians armed with deadly "ray guns" land in New Jersey and attack. Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" was based on the H.G. Wells novel. 1949: Farmer reports seeing a turtle the size of a dining-room table in a lake on his property in Whitley County, Ind. Airplanes are scrambled; traps are set; divers enter the lake; thousands of people watch the search. No reptile is found, but "Turtle Days," an annual festival held in June, is launched in Churubusco. 1962: The Indianapolis Star reports that Sir Ossis of Liverpool (Get it? Cirrhosis of the liver?) will attend the Indianapolis 500. 1969: A Detroit disc jockey reports the death of Beatle Paul McCartney; news spreads quickly across the United States.

From the basement of a modest house in the boondocks of Harrison County in southern Indiana, Josh Whicker, a 29-year-old middle-school geography teacher and former all-star football player, sits at his computer and pulls the wool over the eyes of the nation, sometimes even the world.

Three times he has done it.

Whicker writes a piece of satire and posts it on his humor Web site, The Hoosier Gazette, www.hoosiergazette.com (slogan: "Indiana's 'real' news source"). People bite. Media people. The joke lost on them, they relate the "news" to their readers and viewers in all seriousness.

Most recently, Whicker concocted an Indiana University researcher named "Dr. Hosung Lee" and wrote of Lee's discovery of the sudden loss of intelligence experienced by new parents. Whicker finds particularly amusing MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann's breathless take, on Olbermann's Sept. 7 broadcast: "Our No. 1 story on the 'countdown' tonight: A five-year study just concluded at Indiana University suggesting that upon the birth of their first child, 100 percent of parents lose at least 12 IQ points, and the average loss is 20. The loss may not be reversible. It may be compounded for each child you have."

The story of Lee's startling finding also was circulated in the media in England, Russia and the Netherlands.

Pranking obviously is not a new game, but lately it has risen to new heights. Last year's Fox reality-TV show "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé," a season-long practical joke on a family that thinks it's preparing for a wedding, spawned this year's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss," in which ambitious young people humiliate themselves in the mistaken belief they're competing for a great job.

This fall, ABC started airing a segment called "Sacked," wherein one pro footballer plays a practical joke on another, during halftime on its "Monday Night Football" games. Ashton Kutcher has become a modern-day Allen Funt. His "Punk-d," one of MTV's top-rated shows, is followed this season by another Kutcher-produced hidden-camera show, "You've Got a Friend," which debuted Sunday. The premise: Contestants are introduced to a stranger, an obnoxious one, and if they can fool their real friends for 48 hours that the stranger is truly an old friend, they win $15,000.

Outlet for mischief

The Internet is crowded with pranksters. The Internet Satirical Newspaper Association has more than 200 member Web sites. They provide "a new outlet for the mischief-minded," says Matthew Felling, of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. "The Web is sort of an open-mike night for the intellectually active and techno-savvy with a little too much free time, mind you."

Often the jokes are obvious (headline from SportsPickle.com: "Al Qaeda.com Bowl Seeks to Soften Image"). But sometimes they're subtle.

Whicker seems to have a knack for getting over on people, having gotten three of his stories into the mainstream media in less than a year. "You don't know for sure what will be picked up," he says. "I didn't think the (parent-IQ story) would get picked up. One I knew would was the guy winning the lottery two days after his divorce was final. That went all over the world. Well, there's so many guys who want to believe that."

Precisely how Whicker's fabrications wind up in the news is unclear, but Whicker credits the popular Web site website Fark.com, a one-man operation (with numerous volunteer contributors) that posts links to strange or funny -- but, ostensibly real -- news stories. Whicker's stories that went big-time all got their start on Fark.

Hoaxes succeed, says Connie Lee Chesner, a communications instructor at Wake Forest University and an expert in e-mail myths, when they "fit the facts about the way the average person would expect the world to work."

When he started the Gazette last November, Whicker's goal wasn't to trick people. "It was just to have fun," he says. "I never thought in a million years it'd be as big as it is now."

Whicker has a few pop-up advertisements on his site and offers "official Hoosier Gazette" merchandise, such as T-shirts, coffee cups, thongs. But satire is for him a hobby, not a living. He seeks from it what many writers seek: exposure.

The Hoosier Gazette went from obscurity, from a dozen or so hits a day, to notoriety, 80,000 hits in three days, following its story last winter involving a mix-up over a Purdue University basketball recruit. Purdue supposedly had given a scholarship to the wrong Jason Smith, not Jason Paul Smith, a 6-foot, 6-inch blue-chip point guard, but Jason Parker Smith, a "5-6 nonathletic geek."

A staffer at the San Diego Union-Tribune saw the story on a recruiting Web site, the kind of site some sportswriters go to for tips. The Union-Tribune staffer, a long-time employee who would later be disciplined along with a colleague, fell for the story.

Jim Rome, the nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, also picked up the story (though by the end of the show he explained it was a hoax). Purdue's sports information office was besieged with calls from reporters from all over the country.

"I wasn't trying to fool anyone," says Whicker, "but after that, and that huge response -- 80,000 hits! -- we thought, 'Wow!'" Whicker vowed to keep the momentum going and these days makes a concerted effort to infiltrate the mainstream media.

To a point: He still goes heavy on absurdity. In the parental IQ story, he quoted Lee, a university professor, as saying: "This explains why every parent thinks their child is the smartest kid in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time their forty-yard dash."

One journalist who smelled a rat was Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times. "I heard it on the radio," Malcolm says. "Some station out here had bought into it. I said, 'That's too good to be true.' "

A 30-year newspaperman, Malcolm checked with Indiana University and found the story was bogus. He wrote an editorial about the matter: "The trouble with many hoaxes is that their creators are so creative. What they write could be true. And it's fun to read. TV has trained modern Americans that nothing is more important than appearances; if you see it, it must be true."

'Polluting' the airwaves

Says San Diego Union-Tribune sports editor Chuck Scott says: "With so much information available on the Internet, it makes it exponentially more important to verify."

"I don't admire people like (Whicker)," says Malcolm, "people who pollute the airwaves because they can, in the anarchy that is the Internet. It draws down the credibility of all media, and it's not helpful in a democracy, where the main currency of exchange is information. Because you can fool people doesn't mean you should."

Whicker, who posts actual news stories next to phony ones, is unapologetic. "I'm not trying to fool everybody," he says, "just the people who don't have common sense."

Whicker does not look like Ashton Kutcher. At 6 feet 4 inches and 300 pounds, he seems too large to be a smart aleck. In high school he was an all-state and USA Today All-USA lineman for Evansville Reitz's football team and was recruited by Indiana University. He played for the Hoosiers briefly, then got injured and quit. Today, he is an assistant coach at Floyd Central High School.

He credits football with honing his pranking skills. "In football you're always around a bunch of crazy guys," he says. "Practical jokes are a big part of it -- Icy Hot in somebody's jock strap, hairspray on a mouthpiece, that kind of thing."

One of Whicker's moves these days seizes on his wife's fear of snakes. He bought a rubber snake from Wal-Mart and occasionally places it where she'll run across it, like in the laundry.

"He plays tricks all the time," says Erin Whicker, a special-education teacher at a private school in Louisville. "I tell him sometimes I wonder how he has any friends. He can aggravate people so much." The Whickers have been married two years.

Keith Olbermann, who'd broadcast the parent-IQ story, quickly learned he'd been duped and on his next show admitted he thought the Hoosier Gazette was in earnest, apologized for his misinterpretation, then made a joke of it: "So, there's no survey showing that parenthood will cost you at least 12, and an average of 20, IQ points. But did you hear about the one showing how many IQ points 'newscasters' lose when they see a story they really want to run?"

Brian Howey, who writes a political newsletter and daily news briefs for Indiana political insiders, a few years ago had to backtrack similarly. He'd published an item about Al Gore, unaware of its source: The Onion, a humor newspaper. An acquaintance had clipped the story and sent it to him.

"Was I embarrassed?" Howey says. "A little bit." Howey is quick to add, however, that in his nearly 20 years of journalism, he has been fooled but once. "If it happened often, I'd lose credibility and subscribers," he says. "My subscribers want a product with integrity, so you have to have a B.S. meter. Sometimes it's obvious, but every once in a while there's something subtle."

Whicker says he gets his sense of humor from his family. Once his mother rushed up to him and said, "Josh, come quick, your father's got an arrow through his head."

Whicker's father, Mike, 52, a plumber-turned-English-teacher and novelist, had on one of those Steve Martin arrow-through-the-head things.

"I remember doing that," Mike says. "If I'd have known how he'd turn out, I would not have done that."

The father takes that back, however, and switches the blame to his father, Whicker's grandfather. "My dad is funny," says Mike. "He's 80. He's always aggravating his wife. Yeah, my dad. Let's blame him."

Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043.

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