One of my last acts as Director of Digital at The Onion was to help sell our channel to YouTube in Spring 2012 when it was launching its first major investment in original content. What The Onion ended up producing (for which I can take no credit) is some of …
Comedy is important! Technology is important! Comedy and technology are important together! I recently sat down with Nathan Cykiert at The Verge. Mostly we just sat there, but after 53 minutes of silence and mindful eye contact, we talked about all sorts of fun things in this wide-ranging interview. Then …
Editor’s Note: This post, while enlightening, is first and foremost a plug to have you vote for our SXSW panel. If you would prefer to be a mindless drone who simply takes orders rather than reading or contextualizing, you can follow that link right now. Thanks drone! Science has taught …
The comedy world has definitely begun to dip its toes into the crowdfunding pool—Myq Kaplan ran this satirical campaign, Eugene Mirman funded a festival, and Above Average now has a ‘Thingstarter’ series—but through all my research for our AOL show Funded, I never found anybody from the comedy world who …
How do you satirize satire? If you’re asking Dan Schultz and Matt Stempeck, the answer is: “you make it true.” Both are graduates of the MIT Media Lab, and earlier this year they created The On1on. It may not be as funny as The Onion, but the catch is that …
This admittedly blurry photo is the old Onion writers room, sans table. It’s where I spent upwards of 10 hours a week for four years gaining an incredible appreciation for just how difficult it is to produce good, original comedy for more than 20 years as The Onion has. One …
Late night comedy shows have employed the shove-a-microphone-into-a-stranger’s-face technique for several decades now. The Tonight Show has a long history of quizzes and gotcha-type moments exposing some level of ignorance in the public. I’m particularly interested in these street interviews when the setting is the historically black Harlem neighborhood in …
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