It's probably good for those of us who work at the Times-Gazette to realize that not everyone reads all the way to the bottom of the story.

Anyone on Sunday who read to the bottom of my story about celebrities picketing Wartrace would have realized it was an April Fool's joke. But not everyone did; some people, from what I've been told, had quite strong reactions and put down the newspaper based on reading the first few paragraphs. It wasn't until later when a friend or family member let them in on the joke.

This is the second year that we've run an April Fool's gag story on the front page. In 2006, the story was about a show for "Tennessee Walking Gerbils" that was about to set up shop in Shelbyville. This year, I decided to have a little fun with celebrity activism. I wrote a story about activists planning a rally to demand that Wartrace change its name to Peacetrace.

The gag wasn't meant to push or deride any particular political viewpoint; celebrity activism just seemed like a good target this year. I know of some people who cringe at outspoken celebrities even when they agree with them; some celebrities just come across as arrogant and self-important when they talk politics, and some of the condescending ways in which celebrities express their viewpoints may do more harm than good to their causes.

George Clooney's speech at the 2006 Oscars all but stated that Hollywood is more enlightened than everyone else and has been at the vanguard of social change. Mr. Clooney is a fine actor and filmmaker, and his "Good Night, and Good Luck" is one of my favorite movies. But I'll have to agree with the television show "South Park," which jokingly depicted his Oscar speech as a dangerous cloud of "smug" hovering over the West Coast.

We've been delighted here in the newsroom with the way the April Fool's story was received. Just about everyone has had a good laugh, even those who took the story seriously first and only later found out it was a joke.

During my senior year of college, I was in charge of an April Fool's issue of our campus newspaper. This issue was an insert in the regular paper, not a replacement for it, and it was so outlandish that no one could possibly have mistaken the newspaper or the stories it contained for being real. Even so, it turned out to be a bone of contention between the university's two main journalism professors. The advisor to the campus paper, who had approved the project, thought it was harmless fun. His colleague, however, thought it unprofessional for journalists to be involved in such an enterprise. I heard that it actually drove quite a wedge between the two of them, and I was sorry to hear it.

National Public Radio has had no problem with April Fool's stories. I still recall one they did back in the late 1980s about selling Arizona (or was it New Mexico?) to Canada as a way of reducing the national debt. Amazingly, they got a couple of top Canadian and U.S. officials to play along with the joke and give them quotes about the supposed land deal. It was brilliantly executed and just believable enough to give you pause.

All of us who work at the newspaper take what we do very seriously. But that doesn't mean we can't step back every now and then and laugh at ourselves, and the process of reporting the news. By and large, our readers seem to agree.

I hope you enjoyed the story, and now you can relax, knowing that Wartrace will get to keep its name for many years to come.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.