By JESSICA WEHRMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
November 22, 2004
WASHINGTON - Josh Whicker is a 29-year-old middle-school teacher with a taste for the absurd and a talent for writing.
He also has been the source of a bit of a headache for the office of Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind.
Whicker - whose year-old Hoosier Gazette Web site spoofs Indiana news by, well, making it up - created a doozy last week with a fictitious story claiming that Hostettler had proposed changing the name of Interstate 69 because of the number's sexual connotations. Hostettler, Whicker wrote under the phony byline of August Wayne, wanted to change the name to the less risque-sounding I-63.
A handful of Web logs, including www.wonkette.com and www.sierratimes.com, picked up the story, and most reported it as fact. That spurred inquiries from the media and phone calls from outraged constituents to Hostettler's office. His spokesman, Michael Jahr, spent much of a day denying the bogus story as "absurd."
Which is what Whicker said he intended it to be when he wrote it.
Whicker, a geography teacher at Highland Hills Middle School in Georgetown, Ind., has a history as a practical joker. His first Web site was a "sort of alumni newsletter" that goofed on his 1994 high-school classmates. He wrote prank letters for a while. He once wrote a country-music-loving friend pretending to be a representative of the "Mullet Preservation Society."
He launched Hoosier Gazette - www.hoosiergazette.com - last November with friend Chris Kasinger, a Seymour, Ind., chemist. Whicker said they find the most absurd inspiration from reading Indiana newspapers.
"I've thought about doing some journalism stuff, but now I don't know if anyone would hire me," he said.
Within a week of introducing the site, the mainstream media picked up a phony story saying that Purdue University had recruited the wrong Jason Smith for its basketball team. The spoof said that Purdue had signed a 5-foot-6 honor student instead of the high school's 215-pound point guard. Whicker was stunned when he suddenly got a mammoth increase in hits - from 30 views a day to thousands.
The media have picked up more of his stories, including one about a man suing a women's basketball league for the right to play. The site apologized when a fake story went national about a man in a devil costume interrupting the movie "The Passion of the Christ." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann apologized for reporting a Hoosier Gazette story that said parents lose at least 12 IQ points upon the birth of their first child.
After the Hostettler spoof, Whicker got a flood of e-mail from angry folks who do not realize the story's a satire and from others who think it's funny. He said he doesn't understand how people might think his newspaper reports real news. "What legitimate newspaper is going to have a big thing of Kentucky jokes?" he asked.
But he understands how others could believe that Hostettler, an evangelical Christian who has been very open about his personal faith, might feel squeamish about the 69 name. Hostettler, he said, "has been a good sport" about the story, and hasn't called him to complain. Whicker, in fact, says he voted for Hostettler three times.
"I've got nothing against the guy," Whicker said.