An honor box for The Onion newspaper at Wabash Avenue and Lake Street. (Credit: CBS)
Reporting Regine Schlesinger
CHICAGO (CBS) — With tongue firmly in cheek, the Onion serves up wacky news every day on its website and in its newspaper.
Especially for young readers, the Onion offers a daily dose of satire. With corporate offices already in Chicago, the Onion earlier this year moved its editorial staff here as well.
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Will Tracy is one of the editors.
“We’re all severely mentally ill people,” said Tracy. “We’re not capable of working anywhere else.”
The Onion is now out with what it calls a definitive encyclopedia of existing information, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge. Tracy says nothing is off-limits.
“Just in terms of topics, no,” said Tracy. “We make jokes about war and genocide and all kinds of diseases and the worst things you can imagine. And they’re all certainly myriad in this book.”
So what’s next for the writers at the Onion?
“Aluminum siding, I think is going to be the future for us,” said Tracy. “I think that’s really a booming market. And I think it has a much brighter future than print journalism.”
While much of the Onion’s news is pure fiction, its recent story naming North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, the sexiest man alive, was picked up as a serious story by China’s People’s Daily newspaper which did a 55-page spread on it.
The Onion, offering daily satire made in Chicago.
