By Karen Feigenbaum
[4.5 stars out of 5]
The Onion is a well-loved satirical on-line newspaper with a devout
fan-base and an interesting history. Originally created twelve years
ago by University of Wisconsin undergraduates, the paper turned web-site
now houses editorial offices in New York. Over the years, it has published
two books, including the bestseller "Our Dumb Century",
and has optioned two articles to DreamWorks to be made into screenplays.
In extremely recent news, The Onion has just inked a first-look deal
with Miramax and their Dimension Films unit to make what Onion editor
in chief Robert Siegel describes as "movies that don't suck."
(2/18/2001 Daily Variety)
The site is well laid out with beautifully sardonic and highly liberally
biased content. The news material itself ranges from complete absurdism
(examples of past headlines include, "Area Man Just Wants Regular
Haircut Without All The Frou-Frou" and "Video-Game Characters
Denounce Randomly Placed Swinging Blades") to biting political
commentary (e.g. "Bush Executes 253 New Mexico Democrats: Retakes
State's Five Electoral Votes" and "NYPD Apologizes For Accidental
Shooting-Clubbing- Stabbing-Firebombing Death"). Naturally, there
are numerous shades of gray along the spectrum from ridiculous to
sharp political criticism (e.g. "Local Anorexic Still Way Too
Fat" and "Nation's Educators Alarmed By Poorly Written Teen
Suicide Notes").
In addition to spoofing articles, there are parodies of other common
news items. One such section is that of the "STATshot: A look
at the numbers that shape your world," which creates percentage
breakdowns of the nation on statements such as, "How Are We Coping
With Our Crippling Depression and Loneliness." According to that
particular STATshot, 17% of us are "pursuing acting careers."
A similar feature is that of the Infographic, where questions are
posed such as, "What is the government doing to combat the problem
of western wildfires." Suggested answers include: "Advising
trees to stop, drop, and roll," "Bombing Iraq," and
"Explaining to Idaho that it is better to do this than fade away."
Additionally, there is a "What Do You Think?" feature, which
hosts the exact same people's pictures every week, simply changing
their names and job titles. These people are supposed to be providing
brief opinions about current events, such as this week's poll on "Clinton
And The Fugitive Financier." As one would expect from this utterly
unserious newspaper, the answers are ludicrous and often ridicule
the uninformed nature of much of the nation's population.
Logistically, the site is easily comprehensible, eye-friendly, and
simple for determining hyperlink content. The only complaint to be
lodged is in reference to perusing the archives. Rather than just
accessing past headlines, the link retrieves snippets of the articles
along with accompanying pictures, piling them into a three-column
jumble that spills text out of browser range. And because of the heaviness
of these archive pages, the load-time is unnecessarily long.
Overall, The Onion is a spectacular web-site with wonderfully sharp
wit and often necessarily dangerous ideas. New editions are posted
every Tuesday.