Because you are not allowed to have a good laugh in the media industry, journalism ethicists are upset with the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News for running advertisements promoting a fake airline, without disclosing that the ads were just parodies used for marketing purposes.

"It is clearly deception," says Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute. "Newspapers should not be in the business of deception. I can’t imagine the Inquirer and Daily News would run fake ads from other companies."

But what if the ads were really funny?

Philadelphia Media Holdings, which wanted to test out the response rates of its print and online products, ran the ads for Derrie-Air (get it?), a fictitious airline that charges passengers by the pound. (Philly to LA: $2.25/lb. Philly to Chicago: Just $1.40/lb!)

Turns out, they worked! Click-thrus for the online ads were recorded at 1.25 percent, compared to standard average of just 0.05 percent.

But still, everyone isn't so pleased with the result. Says the Society of Professional Journalists prez Clint Brewer: "My concern would be, given how thirsty the public is for affordable air travel, if readers were to be miffed about this being false, would they then transfer those feelings to the news side of the papers? I would be concerned if I was in those newsrooms."

Uhhh, yeah. No. As if readers' perceptions of newspapers could get any worse. At least they could start thinking of them as outlets for dark humor.

Anyhow. The semi-amusing (fictional) story, about how Derrie-Air got its start, follows.