The Onion's Finest News Reporting, Volume 1

Started by two University of Wisconsin undergraduates in 1988, The Onion began as an alternative weekly newspaper -- with an emphasis on parody -- in  Madison. While some believe The Onion got its name from the slang for a juicy news story, it was actually named when the two founders were short on cash and eating onion sandwiches. Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers worked as a cartoonist during The Onion's first year, then with Pete Haise, the current publisher, bought the paper from its founders. For a long time we were kind of a Weekly World News parody combined with your usual sophomoric college-humor publication, says Dikkers. In 1995 Dikkers shifted the focus of the paper to a straight news parody and found the voice for which The Onion is known today.In 1996, The Onion made an unprecedented launch into cyberspace, and www.theonion.com soon became one of the nation's most heavily visited Web sites. The newspaper edition is available in bookstores and newsstands nationwide.  With a half-million readers online, more than 350,000 readers of the print edition, and millions of listeners to The Onion Radio News (broadcast on 72 stations nationwide), The Onion has been called the most popular humor periodical in world history by The New Yorker.And the plaudits don't stop there.  The Chicago Tribune called it genius and Rolling Stone named Scott Dikkers one of the nation's top-ten favorite writers. Scott Dikkers and the editorial staff of The Onion -- Robert  Siegel, Todd Hanson, Maria Schneider, Tim Harrod, Carol Kolb, John Krewson, Mike Loew, Joe Garden, Ben Karlin and David Javerbaum -- are based in Madison, Wisconsin.