I am not funny. Maybe sometimes I am. I try to be. I often laugh at my own jokes. All good reasons why I found it fascinating to take a peek into the delightful and devious minds behind The Onion in a recent NY times article.
The Onion newspaper was originally founded right here in Madison, Wisconsin, and I occasionally wheeze past the offices that still remain here on my even more-so occasional runs. And back when I had a different job and no car, a co-worker would drive me home and I would make wild faces and gestures towards the Onion conference room window every evening around 5. We’re pretty sure they never, ever saw me. Or they did a really good job of ignoring us.
They must have just been working really hard, because as the Times reports, the process for coming up with insanely entertaining headlines is actually quite regimented:
The staff devotes the first two days of every week to composing headlines, then assigns the articles that will run beneath them and provide a body of supporting jokes…
A Tuesday in October found Mr. Randazzo and nine writers and editors gathered around a conference table in the SoHo offices of The Onion for a headline meeting. Each had a printout of 101 headline contenders, which had been submitted —mostly by one another, with some support staff and freelance contributors also allowed to pitch in — the day before.
“It’s a very specific, regimented format,” said Dan Guterman, the head writer. “You sort of learn the Onion language by rote. We spend hundreds of hours in the room deconstructing the jokes. I don’t think there’s anything comparable to the amount of material we generate and reject just to come up with the week’s headlines.”
Collecting Headlines Funnier Than This via The New York Times.
