Unfortunate connection or April fools? Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 14). There is an simple reason why the Vienna Boys Choir story is the most read story on The Times‘ website. It may be dark humour on a very disturbing topic, but look at the name of the journalist who wrote the article. Has there ever been a more unfortunate linking of topic and journalist? — Crikey reader Tim Mackay

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A couple of  prime April Fool’s stories in the media this morning. In The Age, Michael Shmith reports an interview with Barrie Kosky from a certain magazine, in which the great goggled one expresses his relief at leaving Melbourne: “for me it was like getting out of a concentration camp”. Kosky left Melbwitz to go to…Vienna. Yes, great to get away from our historically ignorant and irony-oblivious culture, for something so…pure.

But for sheer stupidity, you can’t go past “Craig Emerson” in The Oz, who suggests that California’s rise and fall is due to going from vigorous free-market capitalism to over-regulation:

“Here’s a dreadful thought: California is the natural evolution of modern capitalism. In the early years a market system enables enormous wealth creation based on reward for effort, risk-taking and entrepreneurship. Affluent, articulate and electorally powerful citizens, as beneficiaries of market-based wealth creation, begin demanding more state-provided services and regulation.”

Actually, California’s budget worries and decline stem from its referendum-style ‘proposition’ system, by which its population has voted themselves wave upon wave of mandated tax cuts. And that dynamic free-market culture was based on violent union-busting minimum wage combines — the things that Labor was formed to fight. Presumably there’s a joke in here somewhere. Or in Cabinet. — Kim Serca

A story with thongs, err, legs. Yesterday, Crikey‘s favourite newspaper, The Northern Territory News, had a front page we couldn’t resist but notice. A croc (of course!), but a story on … thongage — the act of charging someone who wears a pair thongs at a dining establishment.

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As we knew it would, the story went viral. As the NT News parades today:

Australians have overwhelmingly backed a Darwin restaurateur who introduced a $10 charge for people who wear thongs while dining.

John Spellman introduced the “thongage” surcharge in a bid to set the tone at his Tramontana restaurant on McMinn St.

He became a worldwide sensation yesterday after the Northern Territory News published his story, drawing coverage from the London Times to Fox news in Florida, USA.

As the NT News said, the London Times and Tampa Bay’s Fox News ran with the story. And in the traditional NT News way, they went to the NT public today to find out their thoughts. We couldn’t have put it better:

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— Leigh Josey

Journalists’ webmail accounts hacked in China

“Yahoo email accounts belonging to foreign journalists, academics and rights activists appear to have been hacked and Google’s Chinese search engine has been intermittently blocked.” — The Australian

Forget a private eye: hire a journo

“The investigators hired a freelance reporter to file Freedom of Information Act requests, using her status as a journalist to request Woodcock’s e-mails, phone records, voice mails, calendars and expense reports, among other documents — without mentioning that she was being paid for her efforts by a private investigative firm.” — Politico

Yahoo News expands original news power

“The elder statesman of the internet has reportedly pulled in several big names in journalism, and has opened an office in Washington, DC, to generate more original content.” — Big Mouth Media

E-book readers crimp literary pretensions on public transport

“With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to project your own literary tastes.” — New York Times

UK press spoon-fed news by anti-EU thinktank

“Its (admirably multi-national) team of young researchers reads the English-language, French, Dutch, Belgian, German and Nordic press every day, and translates and links to stories that show the EU in a bad light, in a daily press summary that has very wide circulation among political reporters.” — The Economist

Twitter: giving journalists the pats they yearn for

“I’ve been drawing a paycheck as a journalist for 33 years now, and for all of the past three I never knew if anyone really read anything I’d reported unless they were angry. That changed the past three years, when I began reporting via Twitter.” — Multimedia Reporter