Regarding Stephen’s post below, I think there’s a little more to the story than Think Progress is reporting. One, Associated Content is not a “parody” site, as Think Progress states. It’s a start-up looking to compete with larger, mainstream media companies. From their “Company Overview” page:

Associated Content is The People’s Media Company, the ultimate destination site for both the inquisitive public and Content Producers from around the world. Associated Content curates and publishes a robust, ever-expanding collection of engaging, insightful, original multimedia content on the Web, connecting information seekers with the knowledge they want and the widest range of diverse Content Producers.

One of the categories on Associated Content is humor, but the main focus of the site is traditional news and information. I thought this was interesting from their company blog and it gives a great picture of what Associated Content is trying to accomplish:

Content Producers and the Virginia Tech Tragedy: The Emergence of the Associated Content News Team It goes without saying that yesterday was a terrible day. For those of us who live Denver, the events at Virgina Tech evoked memories of the rampage at Columbine High School eight years ago. Awful.
At Associated Content, we were able to mobilize our Content Producers to give us their reports. This was helpful.
Soon after we learned that “something” had happened on the Virginia Tech campus, we immediately contacted all 51 Content Producers that had identified themselves as somehow affiliated with the University (students, graduates, employees, etc.). We asked them for any news or insights that they might have. They responded.
Within an hour, 12 Content Producers logged in, grabbed the news template and started publishing whatever relevant news and insights they had. This was refreshing and an example of kind of power that the People’s Media Company has.
With that in mind, I want to thank these Content Producers for being “on call” and ready to provide us with the news that the people needed. Very cool. posted by Luke Beatty @ 5:40 PM

Two, The AP is not very happy with the writer of the parody, Nicholas Plagman, who actually used parts of the AP’s original reporting in his fake article:

The incident has been labeled by some as a hate crime. To Plagman, that was just absurd enough to write about with his own blend of exaggeration. So he embellished quotes and attributed them to a school superintendent, a man who runs the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, and a Somali student. Plagman defended his decision to quote real people as saying things they never uttered. It is part of the parody process, he said. ”Has anyone noticed that the first half of every quote is real?” Plagman said. In fact, many people noticed. They noticed particularly after Fox presented Plagman’s story as real news in a national broadcast on Tuesday. Other nationally broadcast radio and television news agencies ran with the story as well, and it was only after NBC called the Sun Journal to verify the story that the hoax was uncovered.

We can argue all day on how Fox got the story and if they should have done more to fact-check it, but I think what Think Progress (and those who want to bash Fox News) missed is that this is a big black eye for user-generated content and for those who want to challenge corporate media in general. Associated Content is trying to build a platform to give non-professional journalists a shot at being professional journalists. Because of this, all of its original content becomes suspect.