>Certain issues of The Onion newspaper are mysteriously missing from our 270-year archive, and you might be able to help us recover them.

I know everything they write is potentially a joke but I got curious when The Onion was founded; apparently it was in 1988, 38 years ago :)

It sounds like their archive contains 270 year old contents, not that they’re 270 year old company

https://theonion.com/about-us/ says:

> Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

so I'm pretty sure it's just a joke.

Seems legit, I trust them. They even filed an amicus brief with scotus

Here's the amicus brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...

Read the whole thing. Lots of onion-type gags in there.

How does that work on the authoring side? Are there staff writers that follow a court document style guide, or are there lawyers on retainer that are a personality match for the org?

Gillis (head writer for the onion) drafted the tone, arguments and jokes. He connected to Novak's lawyer through a friend at the firm. Novak's lawyer then connected Gillis to a former colleague who helped format it and provide relevant legal statute.

I was surprised that they didn't contribute to the jokes, it really does read like it was written by a particularly funny lawyer.

I think they do it with CSS

Who knows, if they've been around for 270 years, they might use troff like research papers.

I’ve had the privilege to work at a company with a highly aligned legal team. It turns out there are quite a few people who get law degrees and are just sensible, chill, fun people. And if you can hire them onto staff, there’s no limit to the awesome things you can do.

I've never frowned while paying a legal bill. They do good work, provide useful perspective, avoid problems before they start... reminds me of the better engineers I know, but for contracts and compliance.

I'm surprised they got away with the first two paragraphs! The Onion wasn't really founded in 1756, doesn't control the world's shipping lanes, etc.

Later on in the brief they get all self-referential and point out how this brief itself exemplifies parody. But this isn't a parody of a legal brief. It's a real legal brief with arguments and citations that might really sway the court, with some parodic elements.

> I'm surprised they got away with the first two paragraphs!

I'm not. Even if one is entirely unfamiliar with The Onion, the final paragraph of the first section makes it pretty clear what they're about and why the document they're submitting is written the way that it is:

> The Onion files this brief to protect its continued ability to create fiction that may ultimately merge into reality. As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists. This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.

And, as the titles(?) of Arguments I and III note

> Parody Functions By Tricking People Into Thinking That It Is Real.

> A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody.

Yes, but I'm saying the brief isn't parody, it's real. Unless I'm the gullible, unreasonable person who was tricked and still doesn't fully get it.

> Yes, but I'm saying the brief isn't parody, it's real.

You're correct, yes.

> Unless I'm the gullible, unreasonable person who was tricked and still doesn't fully get it.

You're -I presume- neither more gullible nor more unreasonable than typical for humans, but no, you still don't get it.

A huge part of the practice of law is persuasion. What better way to persuade someone that the laws and regulations that have protected parody for ages are good, prosocial, and should remain intact than to gently use parody as part of one's document of persuasion?

If your position is that parody is strictly prohibited in a legal document, then what's next on the chopping block? Metaphor? Simile? Colloquialisms?

Yeah I know, nobody takes The Onion at face value. They like to play with words

jokes? in america's most trusted news source? i don't think so

This is how the exponential growth of technology works. It helps the valuation.

I have a copy of "Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source".

Quoting its Wikipedia page: "The book, spun off from The Onion weekly-newspaper format of dryly satirizing current events, features mocked-up newspaper front pages from the entire 20th century, presented as though The Onion had been continuously in print since before 1900." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Dumb_Century

It seems that they removed the phrase since your comment and now the post is dead serious.

Did somebody steal these magazines or are they just being overly dramatic?

I'm guessing they lost their back issues due to neglect and sometimes tragedy. When people are first starting out they often don't think that in 30 years time they will want a physical copy of their joke periodical and warehouse space is always limited. When budgets get tight it is sometimes the storage bill that has to be cut.

They had a mood swing ahead of the 2008 election, and truly hilarious characters like Herbert Kornfeld were canceled.

https://theonion.com/cash-room-bitch-be-havin-my-shortie-181...

Herbert Kornfeld was the GOAT.

It wuz always about tha numbahs…

Sleepless hours and dreamless nights and far aways / Ooo ooo ooo, wishing you were here…

https://theonion.com/it-wuz-always-bout-tha-numbahs-18195843...

And yet, moderH8ers gonna hate.

Not to mention how easy it is to lose archives in things like office moves. Put in the wrong pile and shredded to save space on a moving truck or a closet was missed to be marked to moved and left to the next renter/owner to "clean out" and not having any clue if it was a valuable archive closet or not.

I believe The Onion moved (back) to Chicago from NYC in 2012 around the time that print editions were also discontinued.

The Lady magazine was one of the more popular magazines in England for about 150 years and recently went bankrupt. They'd managed to keep a few copies of every single issue in their archives, all the way back to the first one. I was petrified they would get junked, but they have been moved to storage, but who knows how much that's costing from the leftovers of the insolvency? Would love to buy it if I had the cash.

Could also just be a joke - never know with the Onion ;)

They could have just lost them too, doesn't need to be nefarious.

Hard to tell if the onion is trying to be funny?

It was me. Just wait until they find out which of the 1920s issues I took.

Should have posted the direct link with more details about what they are looking for and how to help.

That's here: https://theonion.com/archivehunt/

Updated, thanks!

Title should actually be "Do you have pre-2014 Onion issues?"

Because they are looking for issues in 2012 and 2013 as well.

I was excited that I may have been able to help, but I just have issues from volumes 36 and 37... Perhaps this is for the best, as it would have deeply fed my pack rat tendencies.

libraries sadly have to destroy old archives all the time

but it's not like a lost Doctor Who episode, it will show up eventually

meanwhile they can keep eerily predicting dystopia like the government televising executions for entertainment a year before it happens

It won't always show up. There are some magazines that are getting down to a tiny handful of extant copies of some issues.

Even mags where there were hundreds of thousands or millions of copies printed there are issues getting scarce. Trying to find a June 2002 issue of Maximum PC to scan was troublesome. I have one now in the scan queue, but even the cover was a mystery:

https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/maximum_pc/page/2/

TIL The Onion goes back to at least 1988.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of what their new(ish) management has been doing, especially with infowars. I hope they can get the issues they're looking for.

It started at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I was an undergrad there at the time and never missed an issue (but unfortunately didn't save them). A few random observations:

* It was a huge hit on campus almost right away, or at least once it found its footing and sensibility - the dry conventions of journalism applied to mundane events.

* The sensibility of The Onion was very midwestern, and specifically "college-town Midwestern slacker". I knew exactly the type of people they had in mind when writing about "Area Man". This article captures that well: https://www.midstory.org/the-onions-midwestern-homecoming/

* I remember thinking that lots of college towns must have a satirical newspaper as good as this. Then when it went national, realizing that it was really something special.

Personally I always picked up an issue to see if the "Drunk of the Week" was someone I knew on campus.

The coupons at the bottom were a great value. "Most biomass for the buck at Cellar Subs."

I wonder what freshmen who didn't know about it thought about that issue in August of '91 when going to their first lecture "University digs mass grave for incoming freshmen." (The foundations of Grainger Hall were being excavated)

Now you have me wondering how I would have responded to it back in the day. Personally, I avoided the humor sections of campus papers because they felt like more they were by written by teenagers pushing the boundaries (by going for shock value) than anything else.

Yes, I was an undergraduate at the time there then too. Madison had a very active free newspaper culture -- unusually we had two (daily!) free student newspapers with different political leanings and The Onion was a free weekly. (These were all paper newspapers in case youngsters were wondering)

> The sensibility of The Onion was very midwestern, and specifically "college-town Midwestern slacker".

No better example than Jim Anchower, who was hysterical to Wisconsin locals specifically.

https://theonion.com/tag/jim-anchower/

I did a college visit there in 1998, and finding the Onion on campus was a deciding factor in realizing I could live there for 4+ years.

TIL from mid-2011 to mid-2012 the print edition of The Onion was actually distributed here in Toronto (https://globalnews.ca/news/125698/the-onion-newspaper-coming... ; https://nmc-mic.ca/2012/07/24/star-media-group-suspends-publ...). Seems I missed out :(

This was a big highlight for me working at Yonge/Dundas at the time. I could go grab a coffee and pick up The Onion from an old school newspaper rack. First time I saw it, I couldn't believe it was free!

They were free in TTC stations.

I may actually have some of these. I picked up a bunch of issues in Madison in the early 90's and I'm pretty sure I still have them...somewhere.

Area Man has them.

On the night the Onion finally went out of print my friends and I went and took a few of the newspaper boxes they distributed them out of in Madison. One stayed at our friend's house, the other one we used as a distribution box for our own anonymous satirical newspaper we wrote for our high school.

Thankfully it was only out of print for less than a year. My wife and I still subscribe, and I have to say it's still a delight to get delivered and have it sitting around the house. Visitors love it!

I wish the title could be changed to something that reflects the actual need: The Onion has gaps in their archive, and are asking for fans to help fill those gaps.

The missing thing is "your" from the original. The title makes it sound like a notice for people looking to get into the onion's business. The actual title is perfectly clear.

I'd be surprised if the anti-clickbait title filtering is a net positive.

One of the highlights of trips to Milwaukee - picking up the latest Onion and Shepherd Express.

Oh wow, your user name is relevant! I still think about the Smoov B character from time to time, his recurring column in earlier issues of The Onion were... memorable.

Smoove B’s editorial series in which he details his intention to seduce Michelle Obama still sticks with me and makes me laugh after all these years.

"And there will be corn."

I didn’t realize the onion was so old! 1988!!

I never realized that The A.V. Club started out as a supplement to The Onion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_A.V._Club

Yes, they even had full-time professional writers - happier times.

The writing was great and the comments were so good. There would be hundred of people trying to guess what the next episode of Mad Men was going to be about and people picked up on tiny little period details.

Unfortunately they were removed and I don't believe they were archived anywhere :(

More kvetching: https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1q6rn6j/avclub_epis...

For a while I was under the impression that all the reviews in The A.V. Club were satirical, and I could never figure out what the joke was supposed to be.