Funny Because It’s True: How ‘The Onion’ Created Modern American News Satire

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. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Mar.)