Preview: Revisiting The Onion's print issues from 2005
What to expect from our coverage of 2005, when The Onion truly went online, Facebook emerged and the monoculture fractured. Plus, 40 articles I'm especially excited about.
Welcome to 2025! I’m excited to start the 6th year of this newsletter, looking back at The Onion’s print issues from 2005.
The Onion started its coverage earlier than ever — Jan. 5, 2005 — rather than take the customary 3-4 weeks off from mid-December to mid-January. So, look for a new issue this Sunday!
Today, I’m reflecting on this newsletter’s purpose, how American culture has changed in just 2 decades, and some of the Onion 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. And if you’re new, please subscribe! We (usually) send issues on Sunday.
What this newsletter tries to do
I started this newsletter to catalog The Onion’s history and share it with all of you, including the links and images that have disappeared from the current Onion website. I also add commentary and context to the jokes based on real-life events, my memories and my own judgments.
That said, job No. 1 is archiving the past. Each week, I link to everything from the print issue, whether on The Onion’s website or the Internet Archive’s versions.
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?
What’s 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 predicting the PlayStation 5 or the 1st reference to LeBron James in 2003?
Is a joke accidentally prescient today, a la 2004’s “Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix.”
The monoculture was fractured in 2005 and is gone now
I wrote last year about the American monoculture of yesteryear — in particular, before the rise of social media and smartphones.
Trying to pin down this monoculture is difficult and subjective. My memories aren’t the same as yours. We all have rose-colored glasses —
has chronicled how people react poorly to any change, from Walkmans to radios to bicycles. Furthermore, we can overreact to the death of monoculture and declare that every niche “is a cult.”Moreover, I’m not an authority on this topic. On Substack alone, many people are better versed in cultural history than me.1
But here’s my broad argument: In the 2nd half of the 20th century, communication became more pervasive and faster than ever, but it was largely on a “one-to-many” basis. Newspapers, magazines, books, radio, TV, movies and live events — all delivered to you passively.
But today, these “one-to-many” media sources compete against an avalanche of “one-to-one” media options — texting and FaceTiming; social media and newsletters; video games and smartphone apps; streaming and subscription services; and more. Everyone can find their niche and develop their own audience. Media is increasingly less about passively receiving information and more about engaging with and creating content.
This shift has upended business models, not to mention our conception of fame. We now live in a world with millions of influencers and quasi-celebrities who have millions of followers. Yet, there’s a dearth of transcendent fame — as Bob Lefsetz argues, “we are not minting new superstars.” Culture abounds, yet little is ubiquitous.
I honestly don’t know whether that’s good or bad. But in the context of The Onion, satire has become more difficult. Instead of parodying a fairly universal idea of newspapers and culture, today’s Onion must grapple with a million internet cultures and a fragmented notion of nostalgia.
Even in 2005, we could see the fragmentation occurring in Big Media:
In 2004-05, the broadcast networks saw continued ratings slides and abandoned original scripted programming on Saturday night.
Video on demand had already eroded primetime ratings, especially among younger adults.
In 2002, broadcast TV fell below 50% market share — e.g., total cable viewership surpassed it.
Weekday newspaper circulation was at its lowest since the early 1950s, at roughly 53 million daily.
More than 60% of Americans used the internet in 2005, while the percentage with broadband increased from 29% to 41% in 2005 alone.
Facebook added 4.5 million users — nearly all soon-to-be college graduates who were discovering new ways to
waste timeinteract without requiring Big Media or in-person communities.The Big 3 era of nightly news ended, as Tom Brokaw left in December 2004, Dan Rather followed four months later, and Peter Jennings died in August 2005.
The 2005 World Series saw record-low viewership, averaging 17.2 million viewers per game.
Of course, these trends haven’t abated:
Broadcast and cable channels combined are below 50% of TV viewing, with streaming accounting for 41%.
Annual movie ticket sales are down over 433 million from 1995.
No one under 70 watches TV news.
Fewer Americans subscribe to cable in 2024 than did in 1997.
Weekday newspaper circulation has fallen by about 60% since 2005(!), to under 21 million daily. Between 2005-21, an estimated 2,200 newspapers shut down.
Smartphones were invented in 2007 and have become ubiquitous, so much so that 15% of Americans have a smartphone but no home broadband!
Only 3 World Series since 2005 have drawn as many viewers as the 2005 Fall Classic, the then-nadir of ratings.
Legacy media and formats still have power and influence. But they now compete with countless distractions that didn’t exist in 2005, including YouTube, Twitch, iPads, smartphones, the creator economy and more.
The Onion, of course, isn’t immune to these trends. 20 years ago, the company was expanding both online and by bringing print to new cities. But in 2025, the publication largely exists because a billionaire bought it.2
As the monoculture disintegrated, politics stepped in to fill the gap. Now, I’d be foolish to pretend that cultural differences and political divides haven’t existed throughout American history! But there’s an argument to be made that political and cultural divisions have merged like never before.
No wonder The Onion focuses so much on political satire today — it’s the closest thing to a shared understanding we have.
What does that mean in 2025?
I’m genuinely curious to revisit The Onion’s treatment of 2005’s 3 biggest storylines: President George W. Bush’s 2nd term, the ongoing Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.
All 3 of those topics reveal deep political divides in America. How you felt about Bush’s policies, the Iraq War and FEMA was largely (though not entirely) dependent on your party affiliation. We see that today, where Americans’ confidence in the economy aligns more with who occupies the White House than with any data.
That said, The Onion’s 2005 work is much more than politics. We’ll have plenty of laughs related to pop culture mockery, silly “Area Man” stories, and brilliant local columnists like Jean Teasdale, Herbert Kornfeld and Amber Richardson.
The Onion also got creative in 2005, including Valentine’s Day cutouts, an elaborate “Irish-Heritage Timeline” and the futuristic (and Flash-dominated) 2056 issue. Most of these visuals aren’t currently online, but I’ll recover everything I can for you.
And most importantly, The Onion started producing online-only content in earnest in late 2005. No longer would The Onion be limited by a weekly print cycle, but neither could it afford to ignore breaking news.
I’m excited to explore all of this with you — and hopeful that you’ll get a lot of enjoyment and laughs from revisiting The Onion’s glory days.
Stories I’m excited about this year
Enough of my prognostications! Here are some of the many, many stories we’ll be covering in 2025. They’re listed in chronological order:
“Law Enforcement Officials Call For Creation Of Bulletproof Sleeves”
“Study: Watching Fewer Than Four Hours Of TV A Day Impairs Ability To Ridicule Pop Culture”
“Jude Law's First 100 Days As People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive”
“National Gonzo Press Club Vows To Carry On Thompson's Work”
“Unspeakable Happens In Area Town: ‘Oh God, No!’ Say Onlookers’”
“Bush Challenges America To Produce The Perfect Romantic Comedy By 2009”
“First-Time Novelist Constantly Asking Wife What It's Like To Be A Woman”
“German Luftwaffle Chain Offers Waffles, Overwhelming Air Superiority”
“Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index”
“Hey, You Got Something To Eat?” (by A Goat)
“As Long As You're Under My Roof, You'll Play By My Monopoly Rules”
“Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack”
“The Death of Rosa Parks: ‘Now We Can Finally Put Civil Rights Behind Us’”
“CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years”
See you this Sunday!
See ’s 2024 preview of macroculture vs. microculture for one perspective on this shift.
The Onion’s new ownership structure is a good thing overall. But let’s not pretend it’s a scrappy little mom-and-pop anymore.
"futuristic (and Flash-dominated) 2056 issue" Oh the irony!
I remember a few of these articles -- the black highlighters one, the list of everything that can go wrong, and the philosophy student one, but most were new to me.