It is time for The Huffington Post (in conjunction with IAC) to reap the rewards of more than one year's worth of work. Today marked the launch of news parody site 23/6. The site attempts to go the route of The Colbert Report, pretending to be conservative, but portraying stupidity. They get the stupid part right, but the funny but falls far short of the mark.
The site is allegedly attempting to reach "young news junkies and comedy fans" through its coverage of completely made up news and what it thinks is viral video. I guess no one told Ariana and Co. that for a video to be viral, you should probably think about allowing off-site embeds.
The president of programming for IAC says that the team took over a year to settle on it's approach to how to convey news in a humorous manner, and settled on what he's dubbing an "up-to-the-minute topical comedic reaction to news and current events." Again, the only problem with this is that as best I can tell, none of the news reports feature actual news, instead centering around stories like Mukasey and Leahy "awkwardly meeting at Home Depot where Mukasey purchases a watering can." There's plenty of actual news to parody and report rather snarkily on. A blog full of fake news must be spot on in its invective and satire, or otherwise it just appears juvenile.
Another winning idea put forth by 23/6 is a mock 527 group advertisement entitled Swift Kids for Truth, where kids make up negative stories about presidential candidates. It's appears to be satirizing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, but fails on the funny by several measures, not the least of which is the lack of timeliness. The last Swift Boat advertisement ran in late 2004, and were refutations of actual stories told by Senator Kerry, instead of wild and ludicrous allegations that even a child could see through.Then again, we shouldn't be surprised that the Huffington Post should try so hard to come up with something relevant and hip, yet fails miserably. This is the political blog that hired an ex-CBS executive for its new CEO (the irony being that political blogging bought it's reputation debunking CBS anchor Dan Rather's fake news about President Bush's less than spotty military service record).
All this from the creative team behind the blog that keeps raising venture capital and keeps climbing the ranks. Perhaps they should quit while they're still ahead, and focus on a market they actually seem to know how to pander to, because funny they're not.