Peeling the Onion

It is scathing, vulgar, often offensive - and planning a global empire. Sean O'Driscollvisits the New York offices of satirical newspaper the Onion.

It is 4.30pm in the offices of the world's most popular satirical newspaper and my attempts at funny headlines are meeting with awkward silence. "Hmmm," says the Onion'spresident, Sean Mills, scratching his chin and grimacing like he has just swallowed a rancid lemon. "Give it to me again."

I repeat: "Seven presidential candidates caught changing Iraq vote record in middle of night." Still silence. Editorial manager Chet Clem shrugs and taps his pen while looking at the table, a comedy composer listening to an off-key note.

Out of embarrassment, I commit the cardinal sin of comedy - I explain the joke. "It would come with a mock-up photo of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and five others leaning over the voting registrar with a torchlight while a security guard surprises them."

"That one I like the least," says Mills eventually. "It's too obvious. None of the presidential candidates want to be blamed for starting the war. The joke doesn't really add anything."

Other headline pitches get a mixed response.

"Employees notice strong correlation between word-of-the-day calendar and manager's pep talks," gets a half-cocked turn of the ear from Clem. "Bit too long, but mmm, yeah, it could work."

"Africans botoxing babies in hope of celebrity adoption" I have to repeat twice while they listen to it again. "Botoxing," says Clem. "Botoxing. Okay, yeah, what else?"

"All US animals now being pursued by CNN helicopters" gets a warmer response, but has too many shades of a previous story. One final attempt to turn this around. A headline intended for the newspaper's faux archives, the Onionin History, gets a mutual nod but little else: "President Woodrow Wilson celebrates black history month with Klan rally."

"Yeah, okay," says Clem, "it could work, maybe." This is one of the most frustrating and yet compulsive hobbies of New York comedians, writers and journalists - trying to get fake news published in the Onion, which attracts a large audience in Ireland and the UK and is considering a European edition.

Finance journalist Jonathan Bender has been an occasional contributor to the Onion, ranking the joy of getting published above his contributions to the New York Post or sports site ESPN, despite earning just $50 per Onion headline.

"It's worth more than the money," he says. "One simple headline in there and you have people's attention. They will stifle a yawn while you talk about your day's work in a real newspaper, but the Oniongets people's immediate attention. They want to know you."

Unlike Phoenixmagazine or Britain's Private Eye, the Onionblends the common, local and often inane into its national coverage, mimicking trite local newspaper stories about an "area man" or "area women", such as "Reagonomics finally trickles down to area man" or "Area man gets in one last night of sex before breaking up". It allows the Onionthe freedom to comment on almost anything, from research that shows that bullshit is the chief issue in the presidential election to a story about a bored, long-time married couple who are subjected to an excruciating "romantic weekend getaway" paid for by their family.

With eight full-time writers and a vast pool of contributors (many, like Bender, act as funnels for the ideas of friends and family), the editorial team has to shift through about 150 to 300 headlines every Monday morning to find the funniest themes of the week.

"It used to be much more, often up to 600, but we've pulled back," says Clem.

"It's fascinating how deadpan some of the people around the table can be when they're talking about humour," says Mills. "They say: 'Yes, that's hilarious, that's really funny, it's hysterical,' without moving a muscle on their face."

Like Hollywood producers and TV casting agents, the Onionstaff are bombarded with pitches when they're out on the town. "People come up and say: 'Hey, you're with the Onion, you wanna hear a good one?' I go 'Hey's that's good, that's good,' and quickly move the conversation on," says Mills.

The Onionempire has grown from a tattily produced college newspaper, its name "inspired" by its fictional founder, H Ulysses Zweibel (an alternative spelling, Zwiebel, is German for onion) to include a weekly newspaper, a website updated every day and online video, radio and podcast content.

The Onioncame to prominence in 2000, as its internet site gathered a strong international following and the publication began to hire more staff. The expansion came after some bitter disputes about direction. Its former owner refused to sell to TV comedy giant Comedy Central, leading to a rebellion among editorial staff who wanted to move headquarters from Madison, Wisconsin, to New York.

After its move to New York, the Onionindulged its predilection for occasional bad taste. A decision to print a special edition two weeks after 9/11 lead to screaming matches in the editorial room. Half the room wanted to do it, the others felt it would alienate the public. Some people walked out during the meeting.

Those in favour won out and the Onionran with the headline "Holy F**king Sh*t".

Public complaints and threats of advertising pull-outs have dogged the paper, such as with a recent lead article, "Domestic abuse no longer a problem, say bruised female researchers", which came with a photograph of a battered lead researcher.

After 20 years in operation, has the Onionbecome too blasé about its potential to shock? "People are only really very upset when it's something that touches them personally, like something that happened someone in their family," says Clem. "Then it can be difficult, but often the satire is not about the subject itself but the way the media portrays it."

As the co-ordinator of the Onion'snew fake world atlas, Our Dumb World, he is happiest about the entry on Rwanda, which mimicked the media's obsession with vapid celebrity gossip while the genocide was taking place. "So much of the Onion'shumour is not about the subject itself but us trying to catch the rhythm and delivery of the media when they deal with these subjects," says Clem.

There are, however, entries in the atlas that simply cannot be put down to media satire, such as jokes about amputations during the Sierra Leone conflict that reference the victims directly.

Mills says flatly that he has no regrets about any stories the Onionhas run, even when the mainstream "real" media has vowed to stay away.

"There should be a good mix. Humour can be very dark because it touches on real life. Then you mix that up with just some silly stuff, like a picture of a cat that says: 'Cat likes it doggy style'."

He is most proud of a 2001 story when President Bush's daughter, Jenna, reached 18, the age of consent. The White House asked the media to exercise restraint and allow Ms Bush continued privacy, leading one senior Onioneditor to urge his staff to "go for Jenna Bush as much as possible".

After a few hours of struggle, the editorial team came up with the lead headline: "Jenna Bush's federally protected wetlands now open for public drilling."

"I loved it," says Mills. "There was a lot of environmental concerns about federally protected land, so it was this perfect meeting point of two very different stories. Beautiful."

Sometimes, in the cocoon of the Onion'soffices, the impact of an article on the outside world can be lost. Clem remembers getting his first headline into the newspaper, a one-liner about Michael J Fox's battle with Parkinson's disease. "I rushed to the phone to tell my mom, I was all excited," he says. "I told her the headline and there was total silence at the other end of the line. Nothing. It was crushing."

Both repeat that it's not all silly or shocking and that the Oniondoes rise to perceptive social and political commentary, Mills citing articles on teaching evolution as an example: "Evangelical scientists refute gravity with new 'intelligent falling' theory", ran in 2005, while a story about Kansas jailing animals for committing the "Godless" practice of evolution ran in 2006.

But with such a mixed range of comedy, how does the Onionconvince people to pose for photographs, knowing they are going to be doctored for as-yet-unknown satirical articles. It could be a funny story about evolution, it could be a horribly embarrassing story about weird sex or neo-Nazis.

"Our photographers are well used to the hustle," says Clem. "They know how to look at a crowd on the street and find who's going to do it."

"Honestly, people want to be in the Onion," says Mills. "If we go out there and say to 10 women that we want them to pose for an Onionstory about contracting gonorrhoea, nine out of the 10 are going to do it. But of course, you're filtering for those 10 in the first place."

Photos for the most embarrassing articles are reserved for people who call up the newspaper unsolicited, begging to get their photographs in the paper. Mills recalls one recent case, in which a woman called up pleading with them to use a photo of her boyfriend, who never missed an Onionedition. The couple came back from their honeymoon to find a front-page photograph of the man with the headline: "First orgy after Brian's death very solemn."

With online readership up to more than five million a month (up a million from last year) and one of the largest podcast followings in the US, Mills is looking at the next logical step in the Onion empire - a European edition.

"This has been hanging over us for a long time now," he says. "The online readership is definitely there and we've already had talks with the Guardianin England. It's still very much up in the air at the moment. Honestly, do you really want all of this in your culture? I really hope not."

Our Dumb World is published by Little, Brown