1 in 4 Americans say they’ve shared propaganda online, and two-thirds believe “fake news” has affected our elections. The Columbia Journalism Review — the world leader in press criticism — tasked TBWA\Chiat\Day New York with confronting this problem. So we created the Fake Newsstand.
We found the craziest unverified headlines on the Internet and put them on the covers of what looked like real newspapers and magazines, and we distributed them at a newsstand in Bryant Park. When readers opened the fake publications, an insert prompted them to question everything they were reading. The goal was to make people aware of how easy it is to be fooled by misinformation, and to empower them with steps they could take to be better informed.
This idea was half-formed when I joined Chiat (creative team Ricardo Franco and Angelo Maia developed the rough concept), and Executive Creative Director Chris Rowson brought me on to fully bake it with his design studio. With Chris and his team, I crafted all the copy (using research provided by Columbia Journalism Review) and oversaw all the content that went into the newsstand.