I love parody. Maybe it is the cynic in my soul, but laughter at certain events can be good.

What I don’t love is being forced to guess if a written piece is parody or real.

That is what happened on Thursday, Feb. 7, in the Voices section of the The Spokesman-Review A column written by Prairie Voice correspondent (not a full-time journalist) Mary Jane Honegger was a parody of the snowstorm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t labeled as such.

A conversation with Honegger revealed a complex situation: she had absolutely no intent to deceive readers and she had no idea that people would take seriously the idea that actor Johnny Depp would be in Rathdrum helping to clear her roof of snow. What happened, to paraphrase the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” was a failure to communicate between the correspondent and editors.

At that time, the entire Inland Northwest was under a heavy blanket of snow – roofs were collapsing from the weight of snowfall, schools were closed, roads were impassable, and news columns and newscasts were heavy with snow-related issues. Honegger said she had all of her facts together to write a factual piece about snow issues in the Rathdrum area, but she decided at the last moment to write something different.

Honegger said she was trying to write the column in the style of fake news columnist Andy Borowitz after the story “just popped into my head.” She said she did not know newspaper columns cannot contain fiction, even though they can contain opinion. As a result, she told a tale that Depp came to help her family clear the snow from her roof. Honegger said in the column that her son met Depp when he was filming “Benny and Joon” in the area.

On sending it to assistant Voices editor Jim Allen, Honegger said she briefly considered adding a message about the column being fiction, but thought she had added enough disclaimers so that people would recognize the column as a writer’s license for an invented story.

Allen said there was enough in the piece to make it plausible.

“From my perspective, Mary Jane has a stellar reputation for writing solid stories,” Allen said. “The story appears and wow — that’s incredible! Then she buttresses the argument with the fact that her son knows Johnny Depp and Johnny Depp has a place in Whitefish (Mont.). There was no doubt in my mind that it happened.”

It wasn’t until the next day when Allen said someone asked him if it was real that he began to question the column.

“We didn’t call her back and question it,” Allen said. “We’re trained to question and we didn’t. To me, given her background, we didn’t question it in the least. I was absolutely sure that it was true. She was absolutely sure she could make it up. We were looking at absolutes, not in the shades of gray.”

Voices editor Tad Brooks said the Johnny Depp column slipped through the editing cracks when it should have been caught. He credited Honegger’s “stellar” reputation as a solid writer that kept the editors from calling.

“In her mind, it was a fantasy,” Brooks said. “It wasn’t real obvious and it was pretty much our fault that the column got through our editing. A red flag was raised, but we didn’t call.”

So why should the ombudsman even look at this story? Because there are several journalistic issues of concern at work here.

First, newspapers are supposed to tell the truth. Editors are in place not only to edit the words, but also to catch errors and to look for things which may — intentionally or not — deceive the public. Despite good intentions on the part of the correspondent and the Voices editors, this one slipped through and confused readers.

Second, many readers do not understand the difference between advertising and news columns, much less the difference between a column and a news article. Columns can be personal opinion; news stories need to be free of personal opinion. Both need to be as factual as possible. Analysis and commentary need to be labeled as such and should not misrepresent facts or content.

Third, reporters and editors are trained to question, and they should question everything. As some journalists say: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. The news desk should have called to question.

Finally, journalists and correspondents need to communicate with each other. I will be the first to admit that we frequently fall down on this one. Journalists can be some of the worst in communication with each other. We all need to work on improving our communications skills.

One thing the editors and Honegger did right was to admit the mistake immediately and apologize. Honegger said she does accept part of the blame, and Brooks said he and his editors bear the primary portion of the blame. Everyone involved expressed regret over the situation.

Sections such as Voices have a valuable place in newspapers because we are given information that may not be written by professional journalists, but by dedicated local writers who have a passion for writing stories about their area in a fresh, readable way. If there is good news, I hope it is that the lines of communication in the paper are reopening with all the correspondents and the newsroom.