An unimportant announcement
from our Publisher

The Spy welcomes
a rich new investor

By W.R. Hearst, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Massachusetts Spy Publishing Company
and M.T. Hearst, Special Projects Editor

As our readers are aware, the Spy is not invulnerable to the recent economic vagaries that have affected the newspaper business in general and the local economy in Old Sludgebury in particular. We have attempted to respond to these developments without compromising the quality of this newspaper.

Our new shareholder

For example, we have jacked up the newsstand price of the Spy to $1.50 and shrunk the page size to approximately the dimensions of a Bounty paper towel. We have replaced expensive soy-based inks with ink derived from fly ash and coal mine tailings.  We have reduced our page count and omitted a few rarely-used features such as TV listings, arts coverage, and original reporting of any event that occurs more than five miles from the front door of our offices. We replaced expensive wire services such as The Associated Press and Reuters with crap we pulled down from Wikipedia.

We have also taken responsible steps to rationalize operations and control headcount. All editing is now done on a freelance basis in Bangalore by a dedicated, generally fluent corps of "copy-wallahs." As a last resort, we have trimmed our staff through early retirements, buyouts, and, in a few unfortunate cases, staged "accidents" in our parking lot.

However, advertising revenue has continued to decline, possibly due to the closing of almost every retail business in downtown Old Sludgebury, despite the best efforts of Mayor James T. Burke, other than the guy who sells Guatemalan telephone cards. Car advertising has taken a particularly unfortunate hit due to the amazing series of gas explosions that devastated the 12 auto dealerships of the Burke Automotive Group on the Sludge River Highway on the same night. Finally the bankruptcy of Burke Development and Realty Group and the recent string of arsons has led to a decline in real estate listings.

His charming spouse, Shtupela

At the same time, the Spy's cash reserve has been drained away by an expensive and wholly frivolous divorce action commenced by the first Mrs. Hearst who was unable to accept that we were going our separate ways, with me going in the direction of gorgeous, brilliant, alluring [That's plenty, Nollie – Ed.] then 24-year-old metro reporter Magnolia "Nollie" Tangere (now Mrs. Magnolia T. Hearst).

To ensure that I've got the resources needed to support Nollie [Surely, the Spy? – Ed.], I have decided to sell a minority interest in the Spy to the well-known Russian entrepreneur, sportsman, and philanthropist, Mr. Boris Badenov.

Badenov's rise from KGB apparatchik to billionaire is a classic American success story. He used his position in the former Soviet secret police and intelligence agency to arrange for the privatization of a field of oil and gas wells with two colleagues for a down payment of of 2,000 rubles and a note promising not to send the head of the Oil and Gas Section to the Gulag [Surely, promising to pay the remainder of the purchase price over a period of years? – Ed.]  

When his two partners fell tragically from the same eighth floor window of the KGB's Lubyanka Prison on the same day, Badenov became the sole owner of energy resources worth over $10 billion. He has branched out into other fields, including mass media, and now is the front man for [Surely, owns? – Ed.] Muzhiksat, Russia's leading satellite television provider, cellphone monopolies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk, and exclusive rights to distribute half-sour tomatoes throughout the Pale of Settlement. Since that time, he has contributed greatly to the offshore bank accounts of Vladimir Putin [Surely, the development of what is now the Russian Federation? – Ed.].

He has also diversified his empire overseas. Perhaps his most notable foreign investments are the English fourth-division soccer team, the Totleigh Tossers, his 400-foot yacht, the U-di, and his second wife, former Rock of Love runner-up Shtupela Allova. Now he adds another trophy property: a 17% perpetual preferred semi-voting interest in the Spy.

The charming and urbane Badenov, reached at his London home, St. James's Palace, said that he will be a passive investor in the Spy and has no intention of meddling in the Spy's editorial operations, unless they try to stir up trouble with Georgia, Chechnya, Belarus, or Ukraine, in which case he said, "they will be shot. Just kidding. But they might want to bring a Geiger counter to the breakfast table, if you catch my drift."

Badenov said he hoped to put the Spy on a firmer financial footing by, for example, finding new sources of advertising. The first fruits of his efforts appear on this page and are worth a dollar fifty a click, so get going.

He said that he looks forward to visiting the Spy's headquarters and getting to know the staff personally, "especially the young pretty ones," as soon as he "takes care of" what he describes as a series of "patently fraudulent" money-laundering and weapons-trafficking indictments filed by the Attorneys General of 14 states. He blamed the indictments on a long-standing vendetta pursued by individuals he identified only as "Moose" and "Squirrel."