The Onion

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The Onion ( Engl. Onion , onion ') is a US company for digital media and news satire , published the article on international, national and local news. The Chicago- based company was founded on August 29, 1988 in Madison , Wisconsin . In early 1996, The Onion began publishing online. In 2007 the organization began publishing satirical news in audio and video form online, such as the Onion News Network. In 2013, The Onion discontinued its print edition.

content

The Onion was designed as a parody of a daily newspaper . Your American “role model” is primarily USA Today, the best-selling newspaper there . The Onion articles comment on real and fictional events from the world and US domestic politics, television, the world of Hollywood stars and a host of other social issues. The authors of The Onion do not maintain an individual style, but a common editorial style that changes little.

The satirical articles imitate the dry, factual style of an agency report or the tone of an editorial . The wit of the article is always included in the headline. For example, are the "headlines the Year 2005", which The Onion in the issue of 29 December 2005 published " Bush Elected President of Iraq " ( " Bush to the presidency of Iraq voted"), " Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Kashmir Earthquake Battle for Natural Disaster Award "(" Tsunami in Asia , Hurricane Katrina , earthquake in Kashmir compete for the price for natural disasters ")," Pope Died as He Lived: Propped Up for Public Viewing "(" The Pope died as he lived. " : Lined up in front of an audience ") or" White House Celebrates Fifth Straight Year Without Oral Sex "(" The White House is celebrating: Five years without oral sex "). Some articles work with the old principle of the upside down world , for example with the message: “World's Knowledge to Be Written Down” (“The entire knowledge of the world should be written down in books”).

Many reports also deal with local news or sarcastic observations of everyday situations that can occur in anyone's life ( “Area Loser to Spend Rest of Day in Bed” - “Failure spends the rest of the day in bed” or “Everybody Browsing at Video”) Store Saying Stupid Things ” -“ All other customers in the video store are talking stupid things ”). The heroes of many such stories are called “ Area Man ” or “ Area Woman ” - expressions that have become a household name among Onion readers. The joke then often consists in transferring subjective observations to the objective style and sober reporting of a newspaper.

In addition, each issue has statistics on an absurd topic, a horoscope that usually predicts a horrific but original death for everyone, and the current survey ( "What Do You Think?" Or "American Voices" ) on real political issues of the day - where the answers are fictional, namely the names and professions, but never the portrait photos of the respondents. In the “The Onion in History” section , the “title page” of The Onion from a year of the 20th century appears, on which the most important events of that year, the lifestyle and the trends of the time are satirically recorded. The newspaper pages are collected in the book Our Dumb Century .

Not every issue contained the satirical leading articles , which did not come from renowned journalists, but from (fictional) underdogs or bizarre personalities, including the fictional editor T. Herman Zweibel, who claims to have been in office since 1901. Other "columnists" who occasionally occurred, were Larry Groznic, an overweight comic and video game freak, Herbert Kornfeld, an honest accountant , however, in a grotesque Gangsta Rap - idiom speaks, or Jackie Harvey, a Hollywood reporter whose reports from of the world of stars are neither current nor original. In the advice section “Ask A ...” , readers' mailings were answered by very unsuitable advice, such as an elite soldier or a honeybee, who completely ignored the question.

The satirical newspaper was supplemented by the serious supplement (or website) The AV Club , in which current CDs , books , DVDs , films and computer games are critically discussed. There are also interviews with actors and musicians, cartoons and the sex column Savage Love by Dan Savage .

history

The Onion was founded in Madison, Wisconsin in 1988 by Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson, two students at the University of Wisconsin . A year later they sold the paper, which was little more than a collection of jokes, for $ 19,000 to the 24-year-old draftsman and author Scott Dikkers and the 21-year-old Peter Haise. At first, The Onion only found local distribution, but with increasing economic success. In 1995, the editors wanted to take the plunge into the wider public with a regularly published parody of the nationwide newspaper USA Today . The author Robert D. Siegel and the layouter Andrew Welyczko played a key role in developing the new style . However, the breakthrough came when theonion.com website was launched in 1996 . Since then, the site has grown into one of the most famous, most cited, and most visited satirical English language websites. The number of page views per month rose from around 777,000 in 1998 to 8,596,000 in 2004.

In January 2001, the editorial staff moved from Madison, Wisconsin to New York . The new financier, the investor David Schafer, ensured further economic growth of the paper and the establishment of The Onion as a well-known trademark.

In 2001, The Onion was one of the earliest satirical media to respond to the September 11th terrorist attacks . The issue on "Holy Fucking Shit - Attack on America" had a chance of being nominated for the Pulitzer Prize , as juror Zack Stalberg later said. The satirical articles in the first issue after the attacks carried headlines such as “US Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're at War With” , “American Life. ” “USA praised: Whoever is fighting us, we will beat them” Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie ” (“ Life in America turns into a bad Jerry Bruckheimer film ”) and “ Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell ” (“ To their surprise, hijackers find themselves in Hell again ”). Politically, The Onion is more left-wing liberal and critical of the government, although many contributions to the Iraq war were intent on treating the soldiers with understanding and only attacking those in power, George W. Bush , Dick Cheney , etc.

Between 2004 and 2005 there was paid premium access. As of August 2011, you can read five news items a month for free outside the US; additional news items are paid for on a monthly or annual basis.

In 2008 the comedy News Movie (original title: The Onion Movie ) appeared as direct-to-video . It was written by The Onion and produced in 2003.

At the end of 2013, The Onion will discontinue the printed magazine edition.

Since 2017, several executives and writers have left The Onion to work for Elon Musk's new company Thud! to work. A “brand new comedy project” should be started there. When Musk made his plans public, The Onion ridiculed them with several articles.

Print output

The print version of The Onion was available as a subscription, and in some major US cities, was freely available for purchase and as a free newspaper. In May 2005 these were Madison, Milwaukee , New York City , Chicago , Minneapolis / Saint Paul , Denver , Boulder (Colorado) and San Francisco . According to The Onion , the print edition reached around 990,000 readers. At the end of 2013, the print edition, which was last available in three cities - Chicago, Milwaukee and Providence in Rhode Island - was discontinued after 25 years.

For reports held real

Articles from The Onion were occasionally misunderstood by other media as real reports despite - or perhaps because of - their aptly satirical portrayal of reality. A selection:

  • The Chinese newspaper Beijing Evening News translated part of an article from The Onion in 2002 , according to which the US Congress threatened to leave Washington, DC if a new, larger and more comfortable capitol was not immediately built. The Onion article alluded to similar demands by American football teams for bigger and better stadiums at the time.
  • The rumor that Harry Potter author Joanne K. Rowling is a satanist also goes back to an article in this magazine.
  • In March 2004, the TV station MSNBC presented an article from The Onion as a real news item . The article cited a fictional scientific study that found that 58% of fitness training practiced in America was done in telegymnastics programs ( Study: 58 Percent Of US Exercise Televised , The Onion 40-10, 2004).
  • In September 2009, two daily Bangladeshi newspapers, Daily Manab Zamin and New Nation , printed an article from The Onion as real news - according to which YouTube films with conspiracy theories about the moon landing had convinced astronaut Neil Armstrong that the moon landing had taken place in a film studio.
  • The Iranian news agency Fars took over on September 28, 2012 almost word for word in English and without citing the original article published on September 24: "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama " ("Gallup Poll: White rural population prefers Ahmadinejad over Obama" ). 77% of the white rural population would prefer to go to a baseball game or a beer with Ahmadinejad. One quote says that he takes national defense seriously and does not let gay demonstrators tell him how to run the country. Alluding to the real myth of the Birther that Obama is actually a Muslim, 60% of the white rural population at least respect that Ahmadinejad does not hide that he is a Muslim. Onion updated his message with a link to a screenshot of the Fars story and the note: “For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars”. “For more information on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary, Fars "). Fars was also referred to on Twitter as a branch with which everyone and all content can be freely shared. On Fars, the message was removed during the day. But it has already been taken over by two other Iranian news sites: Hayat (still online on the 29th) and Mehr.
  • After the online edition of the state-run Chinese newspaper Guangming Daily took over the Onion news from November 14, 2012, according to which the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had been voted "Sexiest Man Alive" of the year, the Chinese, English and South Korean online edition of the line-loyal Chinese newspaper People's Daily released this news. Onion was mentioned and their hymns of praise were also quoted, such as "With his stunningly pretty, round face, his boyish charm and his strong, stocky figure, this heartbreaker from Pyongyang is every woman's dream come true". In addition, a gallery with 55 pictures was contributed. Soon after it became known, the message disappeared.
  • Former FIFA Vice President Jack Austin Warner used an Onion article on May 31, 2015 to express his criticism of the United States over its recent arrest on corruption charges.

The Onion News Network

In March 2007 the Onion News Network (ONN) was started as a 24-hour news network, for which production had been carried out since mid-2006. On February 3, 2009, the Onion Sports Network was started as a spin-off . There are news shows, but also breakfast TV, talk shows and other formats.

Onion SportsDome aired on Comedy Central's cable channel from January 11, 2011 through June 2011 . From January 21, 2011 to March 2012, Onion News Network aired on the Independent Film Channel (IFC).

Awards

Books

  • Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source . 1999. ISBN 0-609-80461-8
  • The Onion's Finest News Reporting, Volume 1 . 2000. ISBN 0-609-80463-4
  • Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of The Onion . 2001. ISBN 0-609-80834-6
  • The Onion Ad Nauseam: Complete News Archives Volume 13 . 2002. ISBN 1-4000-4724-2
  • "Relations Break Down Between US and Them": The Onion Ad Nauseam: Complete News Archives Volume 14 . 2003. ISBN 1-4000-4961-X
  • "Fanfare for the Area Man": The Onion Ad Nauseam Complete News Archives Volume 15 . 2004. ISBN 1-4000-5455-9 .
  • "Embedded in America": The Onion Ad Nauseam Complete News Archives Volume 16 . 2005. ISBN 1-4000-5456-7 .
  • Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition . 2007. ISBN 0-316-01842-2 .
  • The Onion Book of Known Knowledge. A Definitive Encyclopaedia Of Existing Information In 27 Excruciating Volumes (one volume), Hachette, New York 2012 ISBN 978-0-316-13326-5

literature

  • Thomas Fuchs: "All about The Onion", Titanic 4/2003

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nick Marino: Six Insights From an Editor at The Onion. In: paste. Wolfgang's, July 22, 2009, accessed on April 22, 2018 (English).
  2. ↑ a b Not a joke: The Onion will end its final print circulations. In: PBS NewsHour. Public Broadcasting Service , November 8, 2013, accessed April 22, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Maxwell Tani: Elon Musk Wanted to Buy 'The Onion,' Now His Team's Hiring Its Staffers for a Secret Project. In: The Daily Beast . March 13, 2018, accessed March 15, 2018 . .
  4. ↑ Elon Musk Embarrassed After Realizing He Proposing Idea For Thing That Already Exists . The Onion, March 15, 2018.
  5. ↑ 'The Onion' Hires Several Pastry Chefs Away From Entenmann's To Form New Bakery . The Onion, March 15, 2018.
  6. ^ Roger Yu: The Onion ends print publication after 25 years. In: usatoday.com. November 8, 2013, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  7. ↑ a b Embarrassing glitch: Newspapers are screwed up with web satire. In: Spiegel Online . September 7, 2009, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  8. ^ Joshua Keating: Iranian news agency falls for Onion story, plagiarizes it . In: FP Passport . Foreign Policy. September 28, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2012.
  9. ^ Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama . In: The Onion . September 24, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2012.
  10. ^ Robert Mackey: Iranian News Agency Plagiarizes The Onion . In: New York Times , September 28, 2012. 
  11. ↑ China falls for Kim Jong-un 'Sexiest Man Alive' Onion spoof. In: telegraph.co.uk. November 27, 2012, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Kim Jong-Un Named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive For 2012 (UPDATE) , The Onion, November 14, 2012.
  13. ↑ fhu / AFP / dpa: False report about Kim Jong Un: North Korea has the sex bomb. In: Spiegel Online . November 27, 2012, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Fettnapf: China calls Kim Jong-un "Sexiest Man Alive". In: diepresse.com. November 27, 2012, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Kim Jong-un "Sexiest Man Alive": China deletes report. In: diepresse.com. November 28, 2012, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  16. ↑ indicted ex-FIFA executive cites Onion article in rant slamming US. In: foxnews.com. June 1, 2015, accessed January 7, 2017 .