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The Onion is a parody newspaper and website, originally published in Madison, Wisconsin (and now in New York, New York).
The Onion was originally founded by Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson. As of 2004, Keck is now publisher of the alternative Seattle weekly, The Stranger and Johnson publishes Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi.
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. Regular features are an illustrated "statshot" box, parodying USA Today, Point / Counterpoint editorials, horoscopes, and a "person on the street" feature that always surveys the same six people (although the names change every week). The Onion claims to be "America's Finest News Source".
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 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. 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.
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