The site's mocking "sky is falling" tone mainly spoofs President George W. Bush's security measures, including a "Threat Level" box whose color codes match the federal system. (The Gunn threat level is currently orange, or "elevated," according to the box.)
The link between Gunn and Bush comes from the school administration's attempts to limit use of popular Web sites such as YouTube and Facebook, according to a creator who calls himself "Porthos."
"Life in high school just reflected what's going on in our nation right now. There are so many parallels," he said.
Porthos and the other two students who run the site use pseudonyms lifted from the Three Musketeers to remain anonymous and further the site's "mystique," he said.
Yet the overall tone is more humorous than genuinely critical.
Porthos said that while the administration "went too far" in limiting access to YouTube, which can help with homework assignments, he understands that students shouldn't whittle away time on social-networking sites.
According to Principal Noreen Likins, some teachers choose to block access to those Web sites in their classrooms, but the school does not.
"The administration ... does a good job. They could do things a lot better, but they're already in a hard position as it is," Porthos said.
And when the site popped up on school computers as a home page this fall, Likins was more entertained than dismayed, she said.
"The edition that I saw when it was put there was actually kind of funny. It was one of those things that we have laugh at and move on from," she said.
It wasn't the site's writers but other students who posted the site on school computers, Porthos said.
But its appearance exemplified the buzz the writers worked hard to generate on campus by word of mouth, he said.
The popularity was why Athos, another writer, did not want the Weekly not to print their real names, fearing fewer readers would care about the site if authors' identities were known.
The site was born when the three friends were brainstorming ways to make money online, and while they make nothing from the parody they created, they keep at it because it's fun, he said.
Between homework and sports team practices, the three barely find time to work on their pet project and have taken on new writers, he said. Although all will graduate this spring, they hope the Titan Truth will remain a subversive tradition, he said.
The Web page currently only shows headlines because of a late-fall server switch, but new articles should appear by the end of January, Porthos said.
The Web site's URL is http://titantruth.co.nr/ .
This story contains 494 words.
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