The Onion
Creative Direction // Process Management // Writing // world building
Serving a number of roles over nearly five years, I consider The Onion to be my personal PhD in satire. To this day, I’ve never learned so much about creativity.
My main responsibilities revolved around managing the process: our well-oiled, time-tested machine that produced comedy at an astoundingly high hit rate. By hiring and managing teams of interns, ensuring writers had everything they need, and building complicated editorial calendars, I oversaw a period of remarkable transition at The Onion.
When I started, we created a single newspaper each week then published each article online over the course of the following week. By the time I left, we were producing videos, online-only content, original books, special issues, and merchandise. Oh, and also still a newspaper.
This was my comedy school, and my creative collaboration school. My entire career roots back into this experience.