Created in 1756, The Onion has 97 trillion readers, completely dominating readership of other publications such as the New York Times and CNN.
A recent poll of journalistic integrity, which the publication made up, puts the witty, satirical newspaper on top.
OnThursday night in the John Wayne Reitz Union Grand Ballroom, Onion staff writer Seth Reiss, and editor-in-chief Joe Randazzo, told a packed house how much easier it is to create news instead of reporting it."We make news," Randazzo said, "That's why we're the best at it."
The Onion is well known for making up news and its writers' goal is to produce a comedic outlook on political figures, sports heroes and other unsuspecting subjects.
Since its real creation in 1988, headlines have announced fake, yet shocking stories like "Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet" and "Florida State University to Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010."
Unlike its competitors, there is a two-week lag time between pitching a headline and seeing it in print, said Reiss, and not all of the fabricated stories make it to publishing.
"Nation Can't Wait to Wake-Up and Start Eating Again", "Report: Every 10 Seconds Someone Dies in a Cool Way" and "Pretty Girl Name Remembered" are just some headlines that did not make it to print.
Sections, such as the strong side/weak side portion of the paper, are widely popular.
In his 2009 senior year, Tim Tebow was the target of a strong side/weak side segment.
On the strong side, the two joked, Tebow was the first 32-year-old to win a Heisman trophy, he can do a 350 pound neck-press and is really good at telling people how much he likes God.
On the weak side, he had one more year before he sucked in the pros.
Tebow was not the only University of Florida joke.
Thursday's Independent Florida Alligator did not have Reiss and Randazzo featured on the front, but rather in an advertisement on the back with sports. And not only was the advertisement on the back, they joked, but the picture didn't even have Reiss or Randazzo in it.
Dane Cook was on the front page of the paper, the comedic duo pointed-out to the largest audience they had ever spoken in front of, and he isn't coming to UF until October.
Had they not been gotten a job at The Onion, both of the comedy writers said they would be neurosurgeons, adding that their entire staff has medical training.
When asked if they had ever gotten in trouble for any of their shocking, offensive "news," they agreed that satire laws protect comedic writers very well.
"Freedom of speech protects you if you do parody," Randazzo said. "If it's not an event that actually happened, and no one believes it, it's ok."
