Minnesota
That's awesome! Several years ago the local paper interviewed a couple teenagers for something (I don't even recall what) and one of them told the reporter his name was Haywood Jablome. It went to print, nobody at the paper caught it, but you bet the public did.
edit: googled it and found this
Taken from nypress.com:
I.P. Daily
As those who follow Jim Romenesko’s media-gossip website realize, last Tuesday’s New York Post was marked by a priceless howler. In the paper’s "New York Pulse" section, a credulous reporter named Neil Graves went out to do man-on-the-street interviews for an article about investment brokerages that double as espresso bars. Under the unfortunate headline "Get a Cuppa Joe & Check Your Dough–New Bank Cafes Want You to Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is," you can read the following: "Heywood Jablome, 41, a Manhattan real estate agent, agreed. ‘This is a nice-looking store, but I don’t see people coming in here to trade,’ he said."
Heywood Jablome! The oldest dirty sixth-grade pun in the book! Since the man who presented himself as "Mr. Jablome" probably gave his real age, we can assume it goes back at least to the time when 41-year-old Heywood himself was in sixth grade, back in 1971. Perhaps the myth of journalists as hard-bitten, been-around-the-block, street-smart types can finally be consigned to the attic.
One would say, given the dweebish profile of most contemporary journalists, that it’s amazing that more hoaxes like this don’t occur, that man-on-the-street pieces aren’t regularly sourced by Heywood Jablome, or I.P. Daley, or Dick Hertz (from Holden). But in fact, they are. This stuff happens all the time. A "Heywood Jablomy" (he must have come from the branch of the family that changed the spelling) had a letter-to-the-editor published in the San Diego Union-Tribune four years ago. ("Move the Chargers to another city!" was Jablomy’s lament.) One Haywood Jablome (must be a cousin) told interviewers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last summer that Mission: Impossible II had "excellent action and amazing plot twists."
The funniest caper ever pulled by the Jablome family appeared in Colorado’s Grand Junction Daily Sentinel three years ago, where the quoted scion (who spells his name "Haywood Jablomi") was remarked as "chuckling with his two friends" during an interview at the Mesa County Fair.My favorite such story, though, appeared in The Boston Globe in 1997. Staff writer Brian MacQuarrie was sent to heavily Irish South Boston to report on a police crackdown on teenage drinking. This required interviewing some tough kids, but finally, MacQuarrie found one kind enough to talk to him. "One of the youths arrested," MacQuarrie wrote, "17-year-old Pat McGroin…"