Give The Onion a Pulitzer Campaign Gaining Steam 110
Long before Stewart or Colbert were on TV you could count on The Onion to bring you your daily dose of fake or funny news. After the recent publication of their 1000th issue, a small but growing movement has started pushing for the Pulitzer Prize to be awarded to the satirical site. The Americans for Fairness in Awarding Journalism Prizes website encourages readers to submit videos on why they think The Onion deserves the honor. The movement has grown so large that you can find videos from Tom Hanks and Arianna Huffington among the user submissions.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget that there are Pulitzer Prizes available in many categories. Should they win an award for reporting breaking news? Of course not. But they could be deserving of a prize in the Commentary, Criticism, or Editorial writing categories. And of course, there's always the fiction category.
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Don't forget that there are Pulitzer Prizes available in many categories. Should they win an award for reporting breaking news? Of course not. But they could be deserving of a prize in the Commentary, Criticism, or Editorial writing categories. And of course, there's always the fiction category.
Perhaps they can get one for being Most Onionesque
i'd vote for that
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Perhaps they can get one for being Most Onionesque
i'd vote for that
The scary thing is, they'd face a lot of competition from the mainstream press.
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Ward Sutton [wikipedia.org] definitely deserves one. Not necessarily for his "Kelly" Onion comics, though, he's done a lot [suttonimpactstudio.com] of amazing [comicsbeat.com] work [suttonimpactstudio.com]...
Why Not? (Score:2, Insightful)
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I was going to say credible, but same post otherwise.
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Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The onion is very funny, and does make ma
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they have no credibility as a news source since they never say "This is the news, this is actually happening." They have never made any -false- statements about the current events, but they haven't made any true statements about current events either. If they have any credibility as a news source for that,
They have credibility because they at least admit they're making stuff up. It's like art, they reveal a larger truth by showing falsehoods. That's why they have credibility. Other news organisations just make stuff up and pretend it's some how newsworthy.
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If they get it then Dilbert, XKCD, FunnyOrDie, Failblog.. should receive one also. Some great journalism there.. /s
I don't think those are quite the same thing as The Onion. They are mostly just humor for humor's sake, or satirizing specific subcultures (office life, geeks, internet). The Onion has a lot of political satire, which is more relevant on the stage of national journalism. It that material on which they would be judged, not the comics about dismembered zombies and middle-school-cyber-bully-style movie reviews.
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Scott Adams has already won plenty of awards. Dilbert is a comic strip, though, not an editorial cartoon.
As for the others - they are great humor/satire websites, but they aren't newspapers. Yes, the Onion is also a print newspaper, and has been for over 20 years...
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But only to morons. Every week some Obama onion article makes the rounds on Facebook with conservatives screaming "ZOMG OBAMA IS BUILDING AN ABORTIONPLEX!!" [imgur.com]
The Onion is almost as cynical and hysterically funny as Fox News. Almost.
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Also, they gave the prize to a terrorist [wikipedia.org] one time.
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Just to be pedantic, Obama won a Nobel prize. They named it after a guy [wikipedia.org]. He didn't get the prize for being particularly noble.
Also, they gave the prize to a terrorist [wikipedia.org] one time.
They did it at least twice [wikipedia.org].
This will scare you (Score:2)
Probably closer to reality most of the time.
Note the publication date.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/ [theonion.com]
Bias (Score:2)
Their only bias is attempting to be funny. They make fun of both sides equally. They may be the only major American news source that doesn't lean left or right. Isn't that worth a Pulitzer?
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Actually the best thing about the Onion is that you don't have to sit through shit, because 99% of the time, 100% of the humor is in the headline itself.
You only read the rest of the article if you want to see the joke in the headline get beaten to death. Oh and 1% of the time they actually expand on the humor and its worth reading.
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Precognition? (Score:4, Interesting)
If anything, The Onion has made people more aware of the news simply by mocking it. Compared to the press-release journalism most news outlets use, it is actually quite the writing accomplishment.
Re:Precognition? (Score:5, Insightful)
My favorite Onion prognostication was "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades" [theonion.com].
Re:Precognition? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of their most accurate predictions was surely this one: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over [theonion.com].
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Baby boomers lived high on the prosperity created by their parents, and then rather than working to keep it up they just put it on the credit card and left their children with the bill.
Thanks for nothing you entire generation of selfish gits.
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Hopefully this prediction will happen one day:
Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man [theonion.com]
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Also good is this piece: Mitt Romney Haunted By Past Of Trying To Help Uninsured Sick People [theonion.com] which was followed within weeks by an article in the New Yorker about the difficulty of Romney having to explain Massachusetts' universal health care that he signed into law.
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They also foretold, that Bush will start a war, and the recession.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/ [theonion.com]
And don't forget about the Sony screwup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ [youtube.com]
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Sorry, but the Onion is to John Stewart as the Arctic to Antarctica. They are similar, but actually not the same thing at all, other than being cold.
The Onion IMO is stupid news. John Stewart is a cynical view of the hypocritical behavior of the politicians. They are not the same thing whatsoever!
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Will the Area Man accept the award for them?
Prizes for everyone (Score:1)
If Obama can get a nobel peace prize for doing absolutely nothing then surely the onion can get a Pullitzer.
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Don't forget about Al Gore's prize for telling the truth even though it was politically incorrect
Fixed that for you.
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Nevermind that scientists ripped it for being terrible science. But if it pushes the agenda you want to hear, so be it.
Either way, creating a movie about environmental awareness while flying everywhere on a private jet apparently gets you a prize dedicated to Peace.
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Nevermind that scientists ripped it for being terrible science. But if it pushes the agenda you want to hear, so be it.
I hear scientists also ripped apart evolution and the link between smoking and cancer too. My own research has been subjected to withering criticism from time to time as well, you might call that "ripping it apart."
You -could- conclude that diverse interpretations exist on all data, the truth is often hard to identify, most scientific issues are complicated with plenty of room for disagreement. Maybe one should conclude that scientists say a lot of things, but that doesn't make it true. Sometimes one
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My best friend is a Liberal Democrat and exceedingly pro-environment. He is also the only guy I know that I would call an actual genius without reservation. He is finishing his doctorate in atmosphere science. So when he rips the terrible science the movie, I trust him. And he isn't the only one.
Take two seconds and Google up "Inconvenient Truth rebuttal" or "Inconvenient Truth lies" and note how many scientists and universities are ripping that movie.
Here is a good rebuttal.
http://www.ecoworld.com/animals/ [ecoworld.com]
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The article you cited seems to take the movie as a scientific publication rather than a movie designed to raise awareness among the public. That was the goal, not to prove that global warming was ha
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My concern is the movie, and not climate change itself.
I'm undecided on how much we impact climate change. We know there are cycles of climate change. And we know we are polluting like mad. Do I feel confident that we understand the full extent of human impact on the climate? Certainly not, especially given how complicated atmospheric science is, and how little we know.
For instance, it has been proposed that global temperature changes in recent recorded history more cleanly correlate to solar activity than
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Just to reiterate: the fucking topic was Al Gore getting a prize for sensationalism. Your over-the-top emtional response to anyone even hinting at disagreement with your religion is telling.
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As for political correctness, Gore and Clinton promised while campaigning for the White House, they'd make the environment a big issue. They promised Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Eight years in the White House, it never happened.
Bush took office, and within 100 days passed Clean Air and Clean Water acts. He passed penalties on auto manufacturers that didn't have hybrids. He passed a tax break for hybrid owners. He passed a new solar energy tax credit. And he passed a law demanding that utilities credit a
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despite publicly stating he wanted the United States to get rid of their oil dependency.
... just like every U.S. president in, what, the last 50 years? Certainly every one in my lifetime.
Saying you want the US to get rid of our oil dependency is like saying you support the troops or think America is great: it's shit every politician says, so you should pretty much just disregard it.
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I agree with you. My point isn't that one party is correct, but rather that I think both parties are for the most part saying the same things. And that the environment isn't as much of a partisan issue that it is made out to be.
Claiming that Gore was exceedingly brave in tackling a politically incorrect issue is absurd. Anytime you claim to champion the environment, it is a politically positive message.
Politically incorrect is questioning anyone who claims to champion the environment.
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I wouldn't, myself, call Gore exceedingly brave for it but you're definitely wrong that there weren't any negative political consequences for it. In the 90s I can remember hearing people (in person rather than via the internet, that having been the style at the time, along with tying an onion to your belt) call Gore a treehugger in a derogatory way and say that they'd never vote for him because he'd probably side with trees over Americans.
Which is completely stupid, but so are a significant subset of voter
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That's extremely unfair. He got it for not being the warmongering fuck that George Bush was. Or simply not being George Bush, if you prefer.
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That's extremely unfair. He got it for not being the warmongering fuck that George Bush was. Or simply not being George Bush, if you prefer.
Ever heard of Libya? Congress approved of Bush's actions. Obama is a standalone warmonger.
It sucks when the truth gets in the way of your rant.
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That's extremely unfair. He got it for not being the warmongering fuck that George Bush was. Or simply not being George Bush, if you prefer.
How is that working out for ya? How many fewer wars is Obama waging than George Bush did? Oh that's right, he has continued both of Bush's wars and started another one. And unlike Bush, he did not bother to get Congress to approve his new war.
Re:Prizes for everyone (Score:4, Informative)
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Give him time, he hasn't even been in office three years yet.
Re:Prizes for everyone (Score:4, Informative)
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He's started no wars, he's started a "kinetic military action". Similarly, George W Bush and Dick Cheney didn't lock up prisoners and tortured them, they "detained" "enemy combatants" and subjected them to "enhanced interrogation techniques".
When a politician (or businessperson, or anyone else who has a job that involves communicating with the public) takes a concept that has a perfectly good, short, clear word to describe it, and gives it a long convoluted phrase to mean the same thing, assume they're tryi
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On the other hand, he already murdered more people in other countries than Bush did in his two terms.
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On the other hand, he already murdered more people in other countries than Bush did in his two terms.
[Citation needed]
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That nobel prize wasn't for doing absolutely nothing. It was granted to Obama for him not being Bush.
If he did in fact do absolutely nothing, I'd support the Nobel comitee. That would be quite an acomplishment.
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By that reasoning, they should give Rory McIlroy a Grammy. He deserves something but it's in a totally different realm of activity.
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The Onion? You have got to be KIDDING me... (Score:2)
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A Fictional novel can win a Pulitzer too, for example.
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So I'm not the only one not on the Onion bandwagon.
I see the Onion as one (early) stage of internet/web usage.
The first stage is getting an email address. At this point, getting and forwarding jokes and humorous links is a novelty.
Then one day, someone forwards you a link to an Onion story. It used to be the big gateway story was "local man reports bowl is cashed." I have no idea what the current gateway story is.
Anyway, you follow the link and laugh at the story. So much so that you continue to read al
Like it hasn't been said yet... (Score:1)
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No. The original actually makes sense. Because the movement is so large, even folks like Tom Hanks and A Huffington, who presumably would not bother with trivial movements, have gotten involved. Yours says that the large size of the movement would mean one should not expect submissions from Hanks and Huffington.
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OP is saying the movement is so large you can't find them, not that they aren't there. It's like Where's Waldo. Of course this is untrue, or nobody would know they were there.
I've actually learned stuff from The Onion. (Score:2)
Pull it -- surprise! (Score:1)
If Dave Barry can win one, so can The Onion.
poor Dave (Score:3)
And it had Tim Allen in it.
Okay but... (Score:2)
Maybe you will argue it's an amazing periodical achievement. Or that it's an important piece of American satire. However, it does not imbue me with chortling.
How it works (Score:2)
According to the official guidelines, there are 14 categories of journalism Pulitzer [pulitzer.org]. Leaving aside the ones that cant be made to apply to the Onion's ouvre (a distinguished example of investigative reporting, for instance), there are only four potential categories in which it could compete:
Category 1 - a distinguished example of public service by a newspaper or news site,
Category 9 - commentary, or
Category 11 - editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoni
Arianna Huffington (Score:1)
Of course Arianna Huffington supports giving The Onion a Pulitzer. She's running her own fake newspaper.
Muscleman In Charge Of 5th-Largest Economy (Score:2)
A classic Onion article is when they wrote about an entirely non-fictional event:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/muscleman-put-in-charge-of-worlds-fifthlargest-eco,877/ [theonion.com]
Meta (Score:2)
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I have an Onion Pulitzer in my pants.
Don't you have therapy you're supposed to be going to, Mr. Congressman?
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How can the Onion survive now that the real news is reporting the special election to fill Wiener's seat?
(and how are Japanese newscasts reporting it? rawr)
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