Funny Because It's True
How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
Discover the real truth behind the original fake news with this in-depth history of beloved humor publication, The Onion.
In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon. Now, for the first time, the full history of the publication is told by one of its original staffers, author and historian Christine Wenc. Through dozens of interviews, Wenc charts The Onion’s rise, its position as one of the first online humor sites, and the way it influenced television programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Funny Because It’s True reveals how a group of young misfits from flyover country unintentionally created a cultural phenomenon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This reverent debut history from Wenc, who served as copy editor on the Onion's founding staff in the late 1980s, chronicles the satirical newspaper's rise and influence. She describes how in 1988, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Tim Keck started the Onion with classmate Chris Johnson to make some money before they graduated and quickly turned it into a campus sensation. Charting the paper's path to prominence, Wenc details how the Onion's 1996 online debut introduced the publication to readers beyond college campuses, and how the paper's pointed yet poignant issue responding to the 9/11 attacks earned plaudits while doubling readership. Wenc also covers the Onion's troubled recent history, detailing how friction between corporate owners and the editorial team over demanding workloads and the paper's 2012 move to Chicago drove staff turnover and burnout. The author sheds light on the publication's creative process, describing meetings during which writers pitch headlines that are collectively refined and later expanded into full stories, and she makes a persuasive case that the Onion's acerbic outlook has made it uniquely well suited to skewering the absurdity of American politics, pointing out that the paper was one of few outlets to cast doubt on the George W. Bush administration's false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The result is a surprisingly earnest celebration of a comedy institution. Photos.
