Life slightly skewed in Onion writers' world

Two of the most important voices in American media graced the halls of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions of higher learning Tuesday to speak to a throng of young admirers who greeted the pair with shouted accolades and weeping pleas for attention.

Or so two editors from The Onion would have you believe.

"Just make us sound impressive," said Chris Karwowski, a 10-year veteran of the satirical newspaper.

In reality, Karwowski and Todd Hanson made it through the College of DuPage library relatively unnoticed by the studying mass Tuesday afternoon. They were at the college for a dinner and lecture later in the evening where they'd meet some of the winners of a college essay contest inspired by their visit.

"Think of it as Oscar Wilde's tour of Europe and Mark Twain's tours of America," Hanson said. "It's a little bit of both rolled into one with maybe more toward Twain."

It was also a free trip back home for the Chicago area natives who were hoping to score a hot dog from Portillo's before flying back to the newspaper's New York offices.

"Really, this gives us a chance to get out and meet people who like what we do," Karwowski said. "It's nice to hear that."

The pair said the lecture mainly will focus on detailing how the writers and editors come up with stories that fill the pages of the weekly newspaper.

"The main sensibility hasn't changed since the beginning," said Hanson, who has worked for The Onion since 1990. "It started when a couple of advertising salesmen got their friends to make up silly stuff to go in between the ads."

Some things have changed since then though. Instead of just a few college students in Wisconsin reading the newspaper, now The Onion has a weekly nationwide circulation of 710,000. Millions of people log onto the Web site every month. The Onion staff has also produced several books that have sold millions of copies.

But while there have been numerous successes, Hanson said the print product has suffered the same effects as its more serious cousins in the publishing industry because of a slowdown in advertising revenue.

"The print edition has been under some strain like any other publication," Hanson said, "but maybe we're doing better than some because of our content, but obviously yes, it's been hard for us to proceed with the status quo."

While the final product may look like fun, both men said a large amount of work goes into producing the farcical periodical.

"At its core The Onion is social satire, not just political satire," Karwowski said. "The most important thing about writing for The Onion is getting the sensibility of the voice."

That's why writing absurd things using traditional newspaper style equals high comedy, the men said.

"It is very important for the product to be presented in that straight voice," Hanson said.

One of the great misconceptions about Onion stories is that they are inspired by real news and just rewritten to be humorous.

"More than being inspired by weird real news, we're more inspired by weird non-news reality," Hanson said. "It's things that people just take for granted that when they step back and think about they'd find humorous, such as there's a former professional bodybuilder that is now the governor of California."

That's why reality is more likely to imitate The Onion than the other way around, both writers said.

"The thing about using strange news stories for inspiration is you can't go anywhere with it because there's nowhere else to go," Karwowski said. "Most likely, the funny has already happened."