Christine Wenc's 'Funny Because It's True' calls 'The Onion' "the original fake news"

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

The satirical news magazine The Onion has been putting out ironic and often absurd headlines for more than 40 years. Christine Wenc was part of the paper's original staff, dating back to its origins as an alt weekly in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, Wenc has written a book Funny Because It's True: How the Onion Created Modern News Satire that traces the history of the magazine's influence. In today's episode, she joins NPR's Scott Detrow for a conversation about the cheap living conditions that allowed the original The Onion staff to experiment, how the paper responded to 9/11, and why she believes The Onion is "good fake news."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. I have this job, in part because I love
0:07.9	words, right? I've always thought a lot about word order, how to structure a sentence in the
0:12.5	exact right way to deliver the message you have in your head, which is why I've always been
0:17.6	fascinated by The Onion, the satirical news site known for its pithy
0:21.7	headlines. In its heyday, the writing staff there were masters at maximizing real estate,
0:27.9	getting the biggest laughs in as few words as possible. Arthur Christine Wentz has got a new book
0:32.9	out about the beginning of The Onion. It's titled, Funny Because It's True, How the Onion Created
0:38.0	Modern American News Satire, and once knows a thing or two about it because she was there
0:43.3	when it was founded. She talks to M.P.R. Scott Detrow about how the onion went from an absurdist
0:48.4	sensibility, you know, laughs for the sake of laughs, to something with the political point of view.
0:54.4	That's after the break.
0:56.1	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
1:00.9	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:05.4	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:07.5	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand
1:12.0	why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:20.5	Here's some headlines for you. Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day long. Everyone involved in pizza's
1:26.5	preparation delivery purchase, extremely high.
1:29.6	Defiant Milosevic eats big, sloppy sandwich during trial. Those are just three headlines for maybe
1:35.2	millions to choose from that at one point or another have graced the front page of the satirical
1:40.2	news outlet, The Onion, America's finest news source, as it has long called itself,
1:45.1	and also a leading pioneer in modern news satire. Its headlines, as you can probably tell by now,
	...

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