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

by Christine Wenc

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 peels back the layers to reveal how a group of young misfits from flyover country unintentionally created a cultural phenomenon.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Humor, Biography, Pop Culture, Business, Journalism

Audible Audio

First published March 18, 2025

Reviews

[Hannah Garden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this was a gas and I absolutely ripped through it. Deeply researched and unsentimental with a lightness and clarity honoring the art and artists--the weirdos and goobers--who created this wild pre-mirror of our current hideous idiot timeline. Fascinating, sad, inevitable. Pure. It'll make you want to band together microlocal and create with people whose faces you can breathe with, human voices in your ears, paper on the table, working in the light together with the action and anger and genius that comes into being when we get together like that, in the little world where we meet. Me anyway that's what it made me want to do.

I got to read an ARC of this and so in my copy there is more penis than I hear the rest of you will get in the published version, which, good for you, you don't need to see that, but also good for me, love that penis.

[Susan Scribner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointingly dry history of the groundbreaking satire newspaper. Too many names of seemingly every single writer, editor, business manager, and artist who played a role in The Onion's 40 year history, and no photos or staff lists that could have helped keep them straight. Gains a little speed halfway as the little newspaper from Madison, Wisconsin briefly turns into a juggernaut that encompasses videos, TV shows, books, and millions of website viewers. Sadly, in the end The Onion can't escape the fate of most legacy press - sold to a private equity firm and severely downsized.

One of the more interesting chapters portrays the dilemma faced by The Onion's staff after 9/11, which happened to coincide with their first planned New York-based issue. Should they cover the tragedy, and if so how? Was satire inappropriate or still relevant? After much debate the decision was made to publish a Special Report that included the memorable headlines "God Angrily Clarifies the No-Kill Rule" and "American Life Turns into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie." The book would have benefited from more deep dives like this, instead of telling us the occupation of every staff member's mother and father.

[Dave Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun ride, until it gets sad.
IF you were to quit this book around the half way point, you could walk away with good feelings, good memories, and thinking it was nothing but awesome.
Sadly, this is a true story. It doesn't end well.
But that first half, what a wild ride!
This book is well written, extensively researched, and fun to read. Doubly so if you were a "gifted" misfit in the 80s or 90s who liked punk, new wave, alternative music and partying with all your other college dropout friends. As I fit that demographic I recognized a lot of the character types in this historical account even if I hadn't met that individual kook myself.
I mean... your gonna be doing 18 hour days anyway, why not accomplish some great project while you and a team of the funniest people you've ever met are completely off your collective nut.
And that is more or less the first half, plus a time of giddy hope and breathless anticipation as everyone expected the internet to revolutionize the world. (LOL it did! ...for the worse)
...And then came the book. Our Dumb Century witch was NOT written by Scott Dikkers, but by the entire staff on top of writing the Onion all day. It was a runaway hit! a million best seller! it made a mountain of money! and nobody got paid! In fact Scott Dikkers signed his name extra large across the top like he was John fucking Hancock and even deleted the writing credits of a lot of people who actually DID contribute.
-Thus begins the downward spiral where people start fighting over the money they never expected to get. When the office moves from Maddison Wisconsin to New York, That's the perfect point to put the book down and walk away.
-After that it's the Corporate years where all the smart funny people realize they don't own shit. They don't own their work, they don't own their ideas, and they are NOT valued creative staff members, but merely replaceable gig workers who haven't met their quota.
One little bright spot, if this were the history of a rock band- the music from this era would be forgettable if not downright bad. The Onion on the other hand was still turning out good quality work during this period although it was done under some deplorable conditions.
At this point I was only reading this litany of humiliations to get to two things. The now famous amicus brief( Onion Amicus Brief.pdf), and the purchase of infowars Don't waste your time, it's not there Still... I learned a lot. I even learned some things I didn't want to know.
The number one most amazing thing I learned from it all? The Onion really truly did used to have a fact checker on staff. Swear to God. Just to make sure they didn't print anything true by mistake.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. This was clearly meticulously researched, which was both a strength and a weakness. Some sections were really interesting, but others were surprisingly dry and full of too much detail about the families and hometowns of every early Onion staffer. This was at its strongest when it was using the rise of The Onion as a lens to explore the changing media landscape more broadly. As a lifelong Madison-area resident, I also appreciated the author's love of Madison and enjoyed having a frame of reference for all the locations.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of The Onion needed to be told and recorded but this book is way too thorough and long. Not everything obtained in oral interviews with staff needed to be printed. For instance, there is no need to go into greeting detail about the inadequate health insurance provided by the Onion to its employees. Nor do we need to read about the company softball team. There is so much repetition that should’ve been cut down to a book two-thirds this length.

[Di · Rating 1 out of 5]

very much a skim read. how can a book about The Onion be so boring?

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

When did I first encounter The Onion? I believe it was early high school 1998-1999 when I went to Madison, the capitol city 90 minutes from where I grew up, and found a free copy somewhere around the square. It was hilarious, a little irreverent, and smart. I felt smart because I got it. I felt proud that it was produced in Wisconsin, which outsiders basically only associate with cheese. It felt cool to know about The Onion and I made it a point to look for a copy every time I went to Madison after that.

This retrospective of The Onion was fascinating. It captures the hippy spirit of Madison, this little island of intellectualism and high hopes in the middle of farm country where we’ve lived for the past 14 years. But this book also captures the spirit of journalism over the course of my lifetime. I went from journalism major to realizing journalism was dying, and this book tells it all… about the rise of the internet, YouTube, satire news… and how The Onion was uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of it all.

And yet, the heart of the story is the conflict between creativity and commerce, that classic tale. That was the most fascinating part. A pseudo business started by slackers became a national phenomenon, but who gets to call the shots about how to adjust to each new profitability challenge? Each new shift in technology?

Fortunately, there have always been people who loved the work The Onion was doing enough to fight for it. I witnessed the changes of direction from a distance and had my opinions (I was pretty annoyed when they all moved to NYC, for example) but I had more sympathy for the necessity of these changes when I read this backstory.

And, after all, this book was just plain funny. What a great read. (Caution: definitely a decent amount of swearing in this one!)

[Samhita* · Rating 3 out of 5]

as i’m consuming more about news, information creation, and the state of commercialisation and polarisation it exists in around the world today, i am yet again reminded of how many of the worlds evils can be directly traced to reagan (this time it’s the telecommunications act of 1986 that massively deregulated news and removed its duty to be accurate and fair + deregulation of industries in general that led to media oligopolies)

but for this book itself, it is almost a horror stories of how something that is based in creativity and political awareness and from the beautiful little minds of college 20 somethings is systemically shredded by corporate greed. it’s abt people from wisconsin which makes sense for the amount of generic white names in this but i really couldn’t keep track of them - some sort of splitting of the book into eras/phases w key participants would’ve been good. wasn’t as avid of an onion fan but now ill be digging back through the archives instead if the new things. also i want them to tell me more abt this bush cease and desist order at the end…

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrote, edited and/or ran our traditional newspaper and its satirical counterpart in college, so this topic is pretty close to my heart. I could definitely see myself getting into some of the heated arguments in the book, like how accurate a parody can or should be to its source material.

I was totally unaware of some of the business problems the Onion was having in more recent years, and I think it is interesting to see how this became an actual company with corporate issues, instead of a group of friends with less defined boundaries. I've never thought of the Onion as something that could go under - it's just always there, ever present on social media with the infamous "No Way to Prevent This" article ready to post just after the next tragedy. I hope it lives forever.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Debi]

I enjoyed the GenX nostalgia, anecdotes, and headlines, but felt bogged down by the financial details.

[Dylan Kramer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a Madisonian transplant who was trying to read a different newspaper/adjacent book about New York when folks told me to pivot to this. I think both books I struggled to find a plot or anything to sink my teeth into other than the premise big media bad.

The bits about the 9/11 print were actually enthralling. Thus earning one star above a stinker.

If you know any of the 68921 named people in this book you might have something to wet your beak on. It reads like a history textbook as you try to navigate who was hired when, when they leave/why, who was dating who. Like idc give me something.

Barely 2.00000000001 stars outta 5. Forced to finish due to being 200 pages in. This reads like a 850 page book and not a 304 page book.

[meg (the.hidden.colophon) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for my e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

The writing was okay enough, but nowhere in the blurb or description does this say that it is 50% personal anecdotes, and this is especially frustrating because I was expecting a biography-like history. I really hate it when books have major elements that are not presented upfront. I really hope this is changed for the final copy.

[Ben Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this but as an audiobook all the names involved just kind of merged into one. Its more a story about how shit business is than a celebration of comic thinking but then thats dissecting the frog I guess. I dont know...local man underwhelmed by book?

PS Fellow childish British people be warned that there is someone with the nickname "Nackers" and it will made you giggle every time.

[Erin Clewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was very hard to get through tbh. i appreciate the author’s research and attempt to name every person that ever worked on staff, but i couldn’t keep anything straight and i felt there wasn’t a clear, linear path/a thesis to latch onto.

despite this, i really enjoyed the grit and humor highlighted in the onion’s genesis, history, and the current iteration. always rooting for the onion!

5/10 here.

[Katie Nunag]

Loved all the Madison/Milwaukee discussion and I laughed out loud every time a headline was read. Reminded me of how much I love the Onion. But a lot of this book felt like “this happened and then this happened and then this guy was hired, blah blah.”

[Dave Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

We’ve all wasted time reading The Onion. Christine Wenc chronicles how the satirical newspaper began and survived through some difficult times and changes in the way people consumed news and paid for it. The Onion started in 1988 as a joke between two college students, Tim Keck and Chris Johnson. They weren’t trying to make a bold statement. They just wanted to start a funny newspaper. The name came from eating onion sandwiches at Johnson’s uncle’s house.

The first issue featured a fake lake monster called Bozho. The photo was Keck’s arm in a stocking. It was blurry on purpose. The jokes were rough, but people loved it. The paper was silly, weird, and fearless.

They wrote, sold ads, laid out pages, and delivered copies themselves. Every week. They used floppy disks, old Macs, and biked to the UW Madison campus computer lab to print.

What made The Onion stand out was its voice. It copied the structure of real news but twisted the content. A fake headline might sound serious, but the story would be ridiculous. Sometimes people thought the stories were true. That only made it better.

The article Dead Guy Found marked a turning point. It wasn’t political. It just played with the news format and showed how satire could expose the absurd in everyday life.

Eventually, Keck and Johnson sold the paper. The new owners barely slept. But The Onion kept growing. It beat campus papers in ad sales and popularity. When it went online, people started sharing stories everywhere—often without credit.

Then 9/11 happened. The staff decided to respond. They published pieces like Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell and Not Knowing What Else to Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake. Readers said these stories helped them laugh again. For many, it was their first smile after the tragedy.
The Onion expanded into radio, video, and TV. Some projects flopped, but others worked. Fans loved its fake news style, and it influenced how people saw both real news and comedy.

Money was always tight. The company changed hands, and some owners cared more about profit than jokes. Still, the writers kept going. They believed in what they were doing.

In 2024, a longtime fan bought The Onion and brought back the print edition. Subscriptions came fast. The new owners promised to fund real creativity and let the writers lead.

Christine Wenc’s book is an interesting look at the paper’s quick rise. However, because the quirky content is what makes The Onion stand out, it is unfortunate that the book says very little about the creative process behind the stories people love.


Memorable Quote

There is a stark reality in The Onion’s recent history. The Onion was once the singular go-to place for satiric insight and humor, but—after more than a decade of investor-profit-driven ownership that changed its satire into “content,” as well as the ocean of other online comedy now appearing alongside it—as of 2024 it’s safe to say this is no longer the case. The Onion is still very good—a testament to the solidity of its editorial methods—but I doubt there are many teenagers now who are devoted fans like the ones who became The Onion’s first interns, and I suspect much of the readership is the same people who have been reading it for decades.

[Wisconsin Alumni]

Christine Wenc ’91
Author

From the author:
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 peels back the layers to reveal how a group of young misfits from flyover country unintentionally created a cultural phenomenon.

[Michael Gleason · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional history of my favorite satirical newspaper that I've been following ever since it was the first digital newspaper subscription I had on my first ever e-reader in 2011-ish, the origins were innately fascinating, although I think it had a bit of a slow start, getting through the non-Onion related chronicling before getting to the good stuff. And the end was also a little anti-climactic, as once the major closure of the NY office, it feels a bit like "And then some stuff happened and now it's today" but I respect that the more interesting bits were behind us and the paper is actually flourishing now so there's not as much drama to talk about. The best passage was probably the 9/11 issue, but it was all pretty great! And a book I convinced my manager to read at work because I wouldn't shut up about it!

[Nathan Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

me, listening to the 1st half of this book: damn this makes me wanna WRITE for DA ONION!!

me, listening to the 2nd half of this book: damn this makes me NOT wanna write for da onion!!!



I found this really interesting. In a lot of ways it’s the story of a beautiful, weird, unique, and powerful artistic force slowly being destroyed by a growing culture of mass consumption and the demoralizing demand for “content” instead of art.

It ends on a positive note and I have high hopes for the future of The Onion!

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting backstory but honestly such a slow read. love the wisconsin connection and appreciation for midwest culture!!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny Because it’s True
How the Onion Created Modern American News Satire.
By Christine Weng.

Original Staff member Christine Weng takes a broad history of the original fake newspaper…

You Are Dumb.

The Onion is a comedy institution, straight out of Madison Wisconsin.

“Naked Man Only One Uncomfortable with His Body.”

It’s comprehensive, with interviews of many, many contributors, going all the way back before the beginning in 1988…

And ultimately the journey is fraught with the issues that all artists face once the product is taken and commodified and run by people who don’t make things but only commodify them.

“Study Finds Getting Smacked Right in the Mouth with a Goddamn Tree Branch Really Sucks.”

And how it moved from a small print operation in Madison to New York just in time for 9-11 and comedy landmines (explored in a wonderful YouTube documentary called “Too Soon: Comedy after 9-11). The way The Onion navigated that is nothing short of exceptional.

“Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell.”

“Us Vows to Defeat Whoever it is We Are at War With.”

This is comprehensive without being exhausting. And in the end, we wonder what the role of fun fake news is in an era where reality doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
Great read.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about the history of the Onion and its many iterations. It of course leaves me nostalgic for the late mid to late 90s era, which is what I read the most, but I'm glad the Onion still exists in some shape or form.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of this book was fun and interesting Growing up near Madison, it was fun to be reminded of what Madison was and hear what a ragtag group out together The Onion. Yeah, there might have been too many details of staffs history, but I knew where all the places were. And then the move to New York - which was disappointing when it happened in real time and still disappointing when reading about it. People were shocked that this paper came out of the Midwest - the National Lampoon gave props to The Onion staff. They showed that comedy doesn't = NYC, then demanded to move to New York. after that it became way too many details, a lot of repetition. The Onion became corporate, way less interesting.

[JDK1962 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I pick up books wanting to like them, and I liked The Onion. But I found this book to be very disappointing. I was hoping to get insight into how the comedic approach was developed and sustained, but it felt like there was virtually nothing. Some brief mentions of how they developed a reproducible style using AP journalism form and mixed in "joke words," a mention of how using fewer words in a headline makes it funnier. And some reproductions of Onion pages....that's pretty much it. No look inside the writer's room, no look at a headline meeting, not even a worked example of a story (e.g., showing how the AP style serves as the foundation). I'm aware of the E.B. White quotation of how analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog, but I thought that at least some of the book would be on the comedy itself, what made the Onion something that you wanted to read.

Instead, you got inside baseball. The history of the publication itself (mainly from the editorial perspective, and with more authorial intrusion than was perhaps good for the book), an absolute overload of names and family details, and endless stories about how editorial basically got hosed at every turn, especially once digital became a content farm to sell ads. It's not a long book, but it took me over a week to get through it--because I had lost interest--and by the end, I just wanted it over with, and was happy to remove it from my e-reader.

[Yvette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Admittedly, I was in a MASSIVE reading slump when this book became available through my Libby app. However, I had placed the hold some time ago, and I didn't want to skip it simply because my IRL personal struggles were taking precedence. I figured I'd just pluck away at it little by little at a much more leisurely pace than I am accustomed to. So I did. Its taken me five days to finish this book because I struggled to connect. I guess I was hoping for a book about a satire agency, that is centered around taking a comical view of stories and broadcasting them, would have some humor in it. It did not. It had interesting moments, and I'm left feeling well versed in how The Onion came to be and how it molded to the world around it subsequently. But there was so much "He said this....so I said this...and then this happened....". It was exhaustive. I am not an avid reader of The Onion. I only went into this read thinking that some of it was going to make me laugh, and I'm at a point where I could really use a good chuckle. This wasn't it.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reminder that art and commerce are constantly at war. Wenc’s interviews dive into multiple moments in The Onion’s history where the two sides were at odds. What was surprising to me was how both sides come out looking a bit ridiculous, throughout the decades. They are both completely out of their element when dealing with the other side. Anyone who tries to play the middle is a fool (holy shit you’ll dislike Scott Dikkers by the end of this).

I wanted a little more from the recent history (new owner, stalled purchase of Infowars), but I get that deadlines are deadlines.

[Alex Nagler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really is two books in one - one uplifting, the founding of The Onion up to the publication of Our Dumb Century, one depressing, a media brand failing to remain as relevant and going through several enshtitifications with changing corporate overlords. And then there's the current Onion, too recent to press to be covered.

[Robin Gailley · Rating 3 out of 5]

True. Not funny

This book read like an editorial article from front to finish. It was difficult to get through. There were a few interesting highlights, but ultimately, the position the Onion took at its inception, dissolved into corporate digital media greed, at the expense of creative writers.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just no----the style of writing just was not for me......