SYDNEY, Australia — The theme was fake news, and the crowd of young Australians at a pub in Sydney was eager to hear more. At the front of the room, two of Australia’s most popular (fake) reporters grilled a panel of (real) journalists from some of the country’s most established news outlets.

The fake reporters, known by their pen names Clancy Overell and Errol Parker, called a popular right-leaning newspaper “one of the last great bastions of news satire.” A progressive journalist on the panel, they joked, probably owned 18 Guy Fawkes masks, associated with anarchists.

Why couldn’t Australia’s news media, Mr. Overell and Mr. Parker asked in October, be more like The Betoota Advocate, the small independent newspaper that they run to great success?

It was a joke that the crowd, and a growing audience of Australians, was in on. Australia’s “oldest and favorite newspaper,” The Betoota Advocate is increasingly one of its most widely read. It is also completely made up.