As The Onion has evolved from a college-town in-joke into an American satirical institution, it has taken a more active role in critiquing US politics. In the run-up to this year’s elections, it has souped up the media to better serve the message.
“The Onion ramps up speed of satire in Campaign 2016”
by Patrick Mairs
AP
September 11, 2016
Even satire has a shelf life.
In a presidential campaign with fast-changing headlines that sometimes defy belief, The Onion has managed to maintain its niche by becoming more agile, just like real news organizations.
The 28-year-old satirical media outlet, famous for creating fake news, has evolved with technology a bit like everyone else, including the news industry it parodies. For the first time, The Onion this summer sent staffers to the Democratic and Republican conventions.
“Although technology requires media to be much quicker, it also allows us to be a bit faster, and we’ve started training ourselves and developing ways that we can be a little more reactive, too,” said Matt Klinman, The Onion’s head writer for video.
Klinman was part of a team of staffers sent to the conventions in Philadelphia and Cleveland with a goal of mocking the news in something close to real time. Its video team quickly posted full-length clips of high-profile convention speeches on Facebook, complete with cable news-style graphics that included jokes and commentary.
“We’ve been sort of wanting to crack a way of doing live coverage as The Onion for a long time,” Klinman said.
The Onion’s sarcastic take on political gatherings apparently struck a chord on Facebook, where its convention videos outpaced those from major news outlets such as The New York Times, ABC, NBC and CNN for much of the two-week period when the meetings were held. The data come from Tubular Labs, an analytics firm The Onion uses to track video views.
The Chicago-based Onion is planning similar coverage for the upcoming presidential debates. Read more.
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It”s that time of year again! The time when a massive chunk of the tech industry drops what it”s doing and puts all of its collective effort into getting a few laughs. As we do every year, we”re gathering up the best/worse/most cringe-tastic efforts in one place for your perusal. We”ll be updating this list as the day goes on, so check back in later!