August 4, 2004

An indescribably cool job.

The Onion lead story "CIA Asks Bush to Discontinue Blog" is currently the most linked thing on Blogdex, unsurprisingly. I was out this afternoon having a brat on the Terrace and strolling down by Lake Mendota, taking some photographs, when I ran into into the father of Onion writer Peter Koechley, who let me know that Peter had written the now-famous Bush blog article. I congratulated him on the extreme coolness of his son's job. He told me Peter was the Onion's representative at the Democratic Convention, which is also indescribably cool. I found this story on CNN.com:
The world's great news organizations are here at the Democratic National Convention: the all-news networks, the broadcast networks, NHK and the BBC and The New York Times and the Washington Post.

And, of course, The Onion.

The Onion, "America's Finest News Source" (see Web site) is represented in the person of one Peter Koechley. And he is, indeed, one: Not just the one Peter Koechley here, but the one Onion representative.

"That's 10 or 15 percent of our entire news outfit," Koechley pointed out.

Koechley isn't in Boston so much to report with daily dispatches than to gather material for future Onion stories. "There's no direct reporting happening," said Koechley. "Our concept of what's topical is a little more glacial."

Koechley, 23, "grew up with comedy newspapers," he said, starting one in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin (also The Onion's place of origin), when he was 13 and another when he was 15. Now he's part of a staff that puts out one of the most notable humor publications in the country ....

Congratulations to Peter. That "comedy newspaper" referred to was "The Yellow Press," written by West High School students, who frequently met at my house. They were a great bunch of kids!

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