On the eve of the G20 protests in London, the Financial Times reported that the world had survived "Equal Rights Day", that capitalism is in fact not the same thing as democracy after all, and that WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) had been found in Detroit.

If alarm bells are ringing, then that's because this was in fact "Not the Financial Times", a satirical paper designed with an eye for detail that had more than a few people convinced, and confused. The mainstream press were quick to pick up on it, and even the FT responded positively, with one of their bloggers describing the imitation as the "sincerest form of flattery".

Ctrl.Alt.Shift tracked down the Editor, known only as Raoul Djukanovic, to find out what had inspired him to co-ordinate a project which had seen him and a small group of volunteers fund, design and distribute 25,000 copies of the paper across London.

"We were inspired by the Yes Men's fake New York Times, the Age of Stupid movie, and a request from the minister for climate change to force him to do his job properly." He tells me, referring to Ed Miliband’s statement, that an agreement on climate change relies on "popular mobilisation."

Furthermore, it admonished the form it mimicked. Djukanovic adds: "It was also aimed at journalists, and their habit of framing news with the opinions of powerful people, like big business and the government. We wanted to remind them that reporters help make reality by the way they cover it. It's no good writing about inconvenient truths one day unless they become vital background in future stories. Too often, news is just dictation from important people, with an effort to make the quotations make sense. Instead, misleading comments should be balanced with facts, and stories should be framed as if people mattered more than making money."

The stories in his paper, datelined April 1, 2020, painted a generally optimistic picture of the future and what we could all achieve together, but Djukanovic sounds words of warning: "Clearly there are reasons to be pessimistic. The week of the G20 summit, the real Financial Times ran a story headlined "Drive for growth 'will ruin planet'". They buried it in the news-in-brief section, but it should have been front-page news. After all, it was telling FT readers that if they carried on with business as usual they'd help kill billions in the coming decades. And the warning came from government advisers. The trouble is, it goes against cabinet thinking, because politicians are afraid of promising anything but prosperity, even if endless economic growth means more carbon emissions and more chance of devastating climate change. We're stuck in a situation where everyone wants someone else to solve the problem."

Djukanovic continues: "It's important to recognise just how serious this is, but then we all need to do whatever we can. A fake Financial Times isn't "The Answer", but it showed what might happen if everyone took action today. We all have power to change things if we try, even journalists."

The idea of using journalism to reshape debate comes up again on the topic of the fallout from the protests, particularly the attention now being placed on police brutality. "From what I understand, the police didn't liaise with protestors in the weeks leading up to April 1," Djukanovic claims, "Instead they planned an operation to let them assemble, then pen them in. That was always likely to be unpleasant, and we're lucky in some ways that more people weren't seriously hurt. All the news coverage was about trouble, in one form or another, understandably of course once someone died, and so much evidence of brutality surfaced. But there wasn't much said about ideas, even before the protests. It made me wonder how activists might do more to shape the news agenda. Even if journalists aren't natural allies, how can we make the most of their interest in protest? I don't have magic answers, but I think we have to work with the way that they work. If we present them joined-up alternatives in snappy sound bites, maybe they'll help work towards solutions. But in the end, we may have to make them happen ourselves."

Djukanovic adds that he was pleasantly surprised journalists printed his criticisms of their work when covering his story, but disappointed to be frequently misquoted and soon dropped from the news cycle: "It was seen as a one-off story, not a catalyst for longer term changes, either in newsrooms or the world. But I suppose I expected that really - that was why I wrote what I did, because I didn't see other people doing it."

For now, Djukanovic is keeping his own future plans firmly under wraps, but what a single issue of his paper demonstrated was that it is possible for anyone to subvert the media messages we are bombarded with and wrestle the news agenda away from the rich and powerful. Now it's over to the rest of us.

You can read the paper online at http://ft2020.com