The news source was The Onion, a satirical newspaper that prints fake news. According to Scott Dikkers, founding editor of The Onion, The Beijing Evening News ran a retraction that stated, “Apparently, there are newspapers in America that print lies.”
“Part of the character of The Onion newspaper (is) that it’s the most important newspaper in the world,” Dikkers said at Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Monday. “This was like the croft of truth handed down from on high.”
Alex Oprea, a Duke Ph.D. student in political science and a member of the Humor and Politics Working Group — which she co-founded with three other Duke graduate students — organized the event.
She said the group contacted Dikkers because of its members’ interest in political satire.
“We also wanted to get undergrads interested in politics, especially with the upcoming election, and we’ve found that political humor is a great way to do that,” Oprea said
During the speech, titled “The Funny Story Behind the Funny Stories,” Dikkers discussed how Mad magazine — a humorous periodical founded in the 1950s — served as his greatest childhood inspiration. He said he became “the funny guy” because of experiences with bullying.
“Mad opened a whole new world for me, and I learned that if you could make the bullies laugh, they wouldn’t beat you up,” he said.
Years later, he was approached by two college students from Madison, Wis., who wanted to create their own newspaper, which he eventually bought. Dikkers said he spent years cultivating a staff of what he called the “minimum-wage slaves.”
