Preview: Revisiting The Onion's print issues from 2004
Ahead of next week's return, why does 2004 seem like a lifetime ago? Plus, a list of articles I'm especially excited about.
Welcome to 2024! I’m excited to start the 5th year of this newsletter, looking back at The Onion’s print issues from 2004.
A reminder that our 1st official issue of 2024 is next week, Jan. 14, as The Onion was on Christmas vacation from mid-December 2003 to mid-January 2004.
This week, I’m reflecting on the purpose of this newsletter, how American culture has changed in just 2 decades, and what stories you can expect to see this year.
If you like this newsletter, please share it! Leave me feedback or ideas in the comments or by hitting reply.
What this newsletter tries to do
The top goal of this newsletter is to catalog and share all the Onion jokes from 20 years ago. Each week, you get links to everything I can find from the print issue, including stuff that’s disappeared from the internet.
This newsletter also explores what’s changed in the past 2 decades. I spend a lot of time asking these questions:
Was an Onion joke funny 20 years ago?
Is it as funny now? If not, why? (Occasionally, the question is, “Is this funnier now? And why?”)
What changed over the past 20 years? Is this joke so good it’s timeless? Has it become irrelevant or difficult to understand? Have societal norms changed? Did a better version of this joke emerge?
What are we missing? Is a seemingly random joke actually mocking a topical news item — a la 2000’s “Federal Judge Rules Parker Brothers Holds Monopoly Monopoly” referencing the Microsoft antitrust trial? Does a reference carry much more weight today — like 2002’s article on the PlayStation 5 or the 1st reference to LeBron James in 2003?
The Onion of 2004 existed in a different world
Was there a singular American culture in 2004 that The Onion was satirizing? Kind of, I’d say. Certainly more so than today. Here are a few reasons:
Tech: Smartphones, social media, streaming services, AI and countless other innovations didn’t exist or were experimental back then. Less innovation means everyone’s familiar with the same technologies. The Onion was still referencing Blockbuster in late 2003! The iPod was the Apple device you carried around, not an iPhone.
Politics: There probably wasn’t a golden age of American political agreement. But the 21st century has certainly made everything more polarized, with cable TV and the internet rewarding the loudest voices, “us-versus-them” mentalities and ostracizing attempts at common ground or constructive disagreement. Your politics increasingly define your entire reality, which doesn’t lend itself to shared culture.
The Onion doing its best work in this era is a minor miracle.
Shared cultural references: Today’s world provides endless entertainment and millions of influencers. You can find almost anything you can imagine (and with AI, you can create the rest).
What’s the side effect? The decline of a unified American culture and media landscape. Even in 2004, big media controlled and distributed most content (newspapers and magazines, broadcast TV, movie studios and music labels). Blogs were one of the bigger alternative sources.
Today? Old media’s still there, but there are a million random corners of the web. There’s social media, YouTube, streaming services, podcasts and more. While there’s limitless information available, you’re less likely to have shared reference points with people outside your circles.
Nostalgia: In the early 2000s, most nostalgia came from decades earlier — the old Hollywood studio system, music labels and decades of the big 3 networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), along with classic books and leading periodicals. Maybe you didn’t like this old-time culture, but you probably knew what it was.
The U.S. didn’t necessarily have a monoculture, but there was more of a shared language — pop culture and news references you could expect most people to be familiar with.
Consider TV viewership even in the early 2000s:
In the 2002-03 season, “CSI” led all shows with a rating of 16.3 — averaging 27.24 million viewers. There were 15 shows with a 10.0 rating or higher!
In the 2022-23 season, the top-rated scripted show (i.e., not the NFL) was “NCIS,” which averaged 9.86 million viewers. That’s 17 million-plus fewer viewers!
I’ve never watched a “CSI” episode, but I understand the premise. Plus, I recognize hundreds of pop-culture references without seeing the source material (e.g., Nixon and “Laugh-In”). Are younger people today aware of “NCIS,” much less that Mark Harmon was also on “St. Elsewhere” (much less the “St. Elsewhere” universe)? I doubt it.
What even is culturally universal in 2024? The NFL, Taylor Swift and political polarization, I guess? Maybe the MCU, Star Wars and Beyoncé? The rest is either niche or nostalgia.
This shift isn’t necessarily bad; it’s probably good in many ways. But it does make me feel like I’m unearthing a time capsule each week.
What does that mean in 2024?
I’m not mourning the death of American monoculture. It is what it is. What I am curious about is how The Onion responded. Did it find new ways to mine humor?
Or, will this newsletter increasingly be about jokes that haven’t aged well or are irrelevant 20 years later (such as 2002’s “Handlers Desperate To Prevent Tara Reid Political Awakening”)?
I’m choosing to be optimistic. Plus, I really do think 2004 was a great year for The Onion.
Stories I’m excited about this year
Here are some of the many, many stories we’ll be covering in 2024. They’re listed in chronological order — the “Black Friendsters” one will be in the Jan. 14 issue.
See you next week!
“Bill Maher Spends All Night Arguing With Republican Hooker”
“Divorced Branding Exec Generates Buzz Before Getting Back Out There”
“Matchbox Twenty Finally Finishes Watering Down Long-Awaited New Album”
“Long-Lost Jules Verne Short Story 'The Camera-Phone' Found”
“Debbie, By The Time You Read This, I'll Either Be Dead Or Vice President Of Marketing”
“Local Life-Insurance Salesman A Catalog Of Horrific Sudden-Death Scenarios”