NEWS
Former Onion editor speaks at Union
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by Michael Gendall
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Robert Siegel, editor-in-chief of The Onion from 1996 to 2003, provoked much laughter from an audience of University of Wisconsin students as he reminisced about the chronology of the satirical newspaper during a Distinguished Lecture Series event at the Memorial Union Monday.
Siegel described the satirical newspaper’s evolution from a “dumb campus rag” in 1988 to a nationally circulated publication.
“We didn’t start out with the goal of being America’s Finest News Source,” Siegel said.
Siegel joked The Onion “just sort of happened” when some students needed some content to surround advertisements for State Street restaurants.
Siegel displayed some of the original editions of The Onion, which until the mid-90s tended to avoid the social critique one can find in the paper today.
One headline from this period, “Clever Bumper Sticker Resolves Abortion Issue,” was supplemented with photos of both left wing and right wing bumper stickers, Siegel said, an editing decision that would not be made today.
According to Siegel, the creative process at The Onion begins not with an article, but with a funny title.
“We come up with a headline, and if we like the headline, we then assign it,” Siegel said. “We don’t assume that anybody is going to read [the article].”
Siegel said his all-time favorite headline is “Special Olympics T-Ball Stand Pitches Perfect Game,” which he described as “almost like a haiku poem.”
High school student from the neighboring town of Oregon and frequent reader Robert Murn agreed with Siegel that the t-ball headline remains his all-time favorite.
“I thought it was really, really funny,” Murn said of the lecture.
Just two headlines Siegel showed the audience were not greeted with laughter, both because of what the headline predated.
One read “Hershey’s Ordered To Pay Obese Americans $135 Billion,” which Siegel said was done as a parody of the tobacco lawsuits. Siegel explained the headline was hilarious at the time, but shortly after the publication Siegel said lawsuits were launched against various fast food restaurants, which he described as “kind of terrifying.”
Secondly, a 1999 headline read “Terrorist Extremely Annoyed By Delayed Flight,” which garnered an uneasy reaction from the audience in light of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
One of the most famous examples of an Onion story gone wrong, Siegel said, was when an article parodying the relocation of professional sports teams was reprinted in a Beijing daily newspaper.
The article, Siegel explained, joked that the United States threatened to move if a new capitol building was not built.
Siegel kept the lecture very informal and at one point even answered his cell phone when it rang, explaining to the caller, “Yeah, I’m on stage. It’s going all right.”
Siegel said The Onion is currently working on a major motion picture, and that about half of the movie has already been filmed. According to Siegel, a native of Long Island and the only staff member not from Wisconsin, former UW students make up the majority of the workforce.
“It truly is a real local Madison thing,” Siegel said of The Onion. “We take huge hometown pride in it.”
