The Onion
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The Onion is a parody newspaper and website, originally published in Madison, Wisconsin (and now in New York, Chicago, and Boulder, Colorado).
The Onion was originally founded by Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson in 1988. As of 2004, Keck is now publisher of the alternative Seattle weekly The Stranger, and Johnson publishes Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi.
The Onion's fictional editor is T. Herman Zweibel, who has held the position since 1901 and is rather insane. The Onion 's slogan is "America's Finest News Source". The paper's real editor is currently Carol Kolb. Other writers have included Rich Dahm, Scott Dikkers, Todd Hanson, Tim Harrod, John Krewson, David Javerbaum, Mike Loew, Robert Siegel, and Maria Schneider.
The articles comment both on current events and imagined stories (example headline: "All Americans Issued Life Jacket for Some Reason"). The paper often reports on extremely minor events in a overly sensationalistic manner ("Area Man Confounded by Buffet Procedure") parodying traditional newspaper features and styles. Obsession with fame and celebrity are frequently satirized. Regular features are an illustrated "statshot" box, parodying USA Today, Point / Counterpoints, random and bizarre "editorials," cynical horoscopes, and a "person on the street" feature that always surveys the same six people (although the names and professions change every week - aside from there always being one "systems analyst" among them).
Just after the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, when the future President remained undetermined, the Onion published a story titled "Bush or Gore: 'A New Era Dawns'" which parodied the similarities between the two politicians. [1] The noteworthiness of this story was largely a matter of luck: the paper went to press election night, before the contested election results which led to Bush v. Gore. The Onion 's coverage [1] of the September 11, 2001 attacks was one of the earliest satirical reactions to those attacks, and was considered for a Pulitzer Prize.
The staff of the Onion have produced numerous books, including Our Dumb Century and Dispatches from the Tenth Circle.
On June 7, 2002, Reuters reported that the Beijing Evening News republished, in the international news page of its June 3 edition, translated portions of a story from The Onion (they were apparently unaware of The Onion 's satirical nature). The story discusses the U.S. Congress's threats to skip town for Memphis, Tennessee or Charlotte, North Carolina unless Washington, DC built them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome. [1] It is a parody of several U.S. sports franchises' threats to leave their city unless new stadiums are built for them. The Evening News is Beijing's most popular newspaper, claiming a circulation of 1.25 million.
Additionally, in late March of 2004, MSNBC's Deborah Norville presented as genuine an Onion article claiming that 58 percent of all exercise done in the United States is done on television.[1]
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2 Related topics 3 External links |
Books
- Our Dumb Century (ISBN 0609804618)
- The Onion's Finest News Reporting (ISBN 0609804634)
- Dispatches from the Tenth Circle (ISBN 0609808346)
- The Onion Ad Nauseam (ISBN 1400047242) (Published Yearly)
Related topics
External links
- The Onion website
- The Onion: Funny site is no joke- CNN profile
- U.S. satire tricks Beijing paper - San Francisco Chronicle (June 8, 2002)