The Onion calls itself “America’s Finest News Source.” It is a statement that, like most everything else The Onion writes, is satirical. While its content is satirical, its journey from a college alternative-newspaper to a leader in modern news satire has been more serious. University of Wisconsin Grant Editor Christine Wenc recently detailed this journey in her book — “Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire.”
Wenc was a copy editor on the original staff of The Onion from 1988-1990. Since her time at The Onion, she has worked as a historian, writer, editor and researcher. After graduating from UW, Wenc didn’t stay in Madison, and didn’t pay much attention to The Onion until she moved back to Madison during Trump’s first election — when the topic of fake news started becoming prevalent, Wenc said.
“It seemed logical to start wondering, ‘God, I wonder what The Onion people think about this?’” Wenc said.
She discovered inaccurate information about the early years when she read about The Onion and its evolution. So, Wenc took matters into her own hands, and spent six years interviewing around sixty people previously and currently involved with The Onion to write “Funny Because It’s True.”
The Onion satirizes current news and makes a parody of USA Today and hard news style headlines, Wenc said. Some of The Onion’s recent headlines include — “Trump’s Support Surges After He Points Gun at Nation,” “Man Who Bumped Tesla While Parallel Parking Sentenced To Death“ and “Teen Warned Not To Accept Group Chat Invites From National Security Advisors She Doesn’t Know.”
Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson started The Onion in 1988, and the alternative newspaper made an immediate impression on campus, Wenc said. Most readers recognized it as a satire, but not everyone got the joke at first.
“I remember people calling and complaining about some article that somebody wrote about Girl Scout cookies laced with LSD, and they were like, this is an outrage,” Wenc said.
Wisconsinites generally have a naturally self-aware and dry sense of humor, which The Onion captured perfectly, Editor-in-Chief Chad Nackers said. The combination of passionate, funny writers with a Gen-X “we-don’t-give-a-sh*t” attitude and an extremely receptive audience led The Onion to flourish.
“It becomes a kind of a perfect potion that just creates this amazing thing,” Nackers said.
The Onion is well known for its intensive pitch meetings, where out of every 100 headline ideas, about two or three get selected. The meetings were conceptualized in the early ‘90s by Richard Dahm, and set the tone for The Onion’s future editorial process, Wenc said.
While doing interviews and writing, Wenc developed an intense respect for The Onion’s editorial process, and the staggering number of headlines the writers come up with, she said.
“The Onion has lasted as long as it has because of the very well defined and crafted editorial process,” Wenc said. “They really work hard to only publish the best five or ten percent out of all the ideas that come in.”
While The Onion wasn’t initially formed with the idea of becoming a big business, it grew quickly in popularity, Wenc said. As locals read and shared the newspaper, it amassed a large following, even gathering subscribers across the country for its print edition. But it was The Onion’s early presence on the internet that really drove its success.
When the website went up in 1996, The Onion had established its signature voice, and was the first fully formed humor website on the internet, making it a trailblazing publication.
Within weeks of its publication, the website had a worldwide audience, Wenc said.
“The core team of writers that really made it great, like the people who are on the cover of the book, they were all there writing for The Onion when it appeared on the internet and just completely exploded,” Wenc said.
A few years later, The Onion moved to New York in 2001 and expanded into a production company. Nine months after their move, 9/11 happened.
While The Onion had always satirized political news and made jokes about politicians, 9/11 and the events following marked a shift in coverage, Nackers said.
“Everybody was up for the challenge, and met that moment really well,” Nackers said. “We were one of the few publications to publish things that were not in support of the Iraq War, and to point out how messed up it was.”
Both Wenc and Nackers emphasized The Onion’s efforts to navigate political satire by punching up, rather than punching down, but both acknowledged that some content has crossed that line. The Onion has always taken a progressive stance on most topics, and tries to point out flaws of both Democrats and Republicans, Wenc said.
“We’re not beholden to anybody like the mainstream media reporters are,” Nackers said. “So, we can kind of be the truth tellers and do that in a funny way.”
With a shifting political landscape in the U.S., especially in regard to Trump’s election and presidency, The Onion has adapted to reacting to rather than predicting news, Nackers said.
They try to use news rhetoric and journalistic conventions to reveal the absurdity of politics, but that proves difficult when so much of the real news is ridiculous, Wenc said.
“You have people doing completely ludicrous and insane things, and you’re trying to talk about them in this neutral news voice, and it just comes off like insanity, right?” Wenc said. “Insanity. That same juxtaposition has happened, except it’s real life.”
As The Onion keeps up with an erratic political climate, they are also expanding their multimedia efforts, and have even brought back their print edition, Nackers said. As an original staff member, recently receiving The Onion in the mail felt like a full circle moment, Wenc said.
The Madison-grown Onion shows no signs of going bad, and for a deeper insight on its journey, “Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire“ is out now.
