A tribute, a publicity stunt or phishing in print?

This might be the most bizarre media story for a while.  Informed readers were not expecting to peruse a copy of the Sunday Tribune yesterday, but a paper sporting its masthead did appear in newsagents.  The southern Irish publication has entered receivership and it will not be printed for the next few weeks at least.

So what exactly was this doppelgänger?  It was a special edition of the rival Irish Mail on Sunday, "designed for" Tribune readers!  Talk about kicking someone when they're down!

The Mail's editor launches a circuitous and highly unconvincing argument about keeping people in the newspaper buying habit.  It strikes me that the exercise was nothing so much as a print media adoption of 'phishing' techniques popularised on the internet.  

There's certainly not much in the way of industry solidarity for a paper fallen on hard times.