All the Made-Up News That’s Fit to Print

You won’t find Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism in the Onion (https://www.theonion.com), but you will get plenty of satire in this wholly fictional weekly newspaper published in the heart of America’s dairy land--Madison, Wis.

A recent piece reports that Sony’s “Wheel of Fortune,” desperate for new phrases, received special permission from the FCC to use word puzzles containing objectionable language.

Meanwhile, there is news from Springfield, Ill. “A local teenager was in stable condition Monday after nearly being crushed to death by the 263 corporate logos he recklessly wore at one time,” the Onion reports.

The weekly paper was created in 1989 by two University of Wisconsin students, although it has never been affiliated with the school. One year later, they sold the Onion to publisher Peter Haise, who owns it today. While the newspaper is distributed free in paper form in Madison, Milwaukee, Denver and Chicago, and has always been popular in those areas, since going online the Onion’s readership has grown exponentially, averaging 270,000 hits each week.