034: Christine Wenc (The Onion; "Funny Because It's True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire")

Christine Wenc is a former staff member for The Onion and the author of Funny Because It's True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire, out right now in hardcover!

Christine stopped by to chat about how she started researching the book in 2018; searching for (and maybe never finding) objective truth; coming to terms with the ways in which others can live in perceptually-generated realities, and how academics can cut, like, a TON of words from all their writing (she’s an editor too, so can say that).

Not only is her book an awesome history of The Onion, it’s a great look at print news media and the massive shifts for everyone involved - from publishers and writers on down to readers and viewers - that took place between the late 80s and early 2000s.

Come for the funny stories about The Onion being created and managing to succeed and change comedy writing forever, stay for the details about how monetizing news is maybe a necessary evil we just keep making more and more evil?

It’s a lovely chat, and it’s a book I highly, highly recommend if you enjoy any of those things.

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