By Karen Gutierrez
The Cincinnati Enquirer

It was a great day for Nat Miller when the automatic towel dispensers arrived at Cincinnati Country Day School.

Miller, 16, is a devoted reader of The Onion, the satirical national newspaper that skewers life in America. For the school newspaper, he writes his own, Onion-influenced parodies, and the overly fancy towel machines were a perfect target.

FUN WITH NEWS

Where else are teens getting their takes on the news? Here's a sampling: • The Daily Show on Comedy Central (fake news show lampoons current events) • Ebaumsworld.com (jokes, animation, games) • "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live (fake news segment lampoons current events) • Homestarrunner.com (animation site with characters like geek-favorite Strongbad) • Fark.com, (daily roundup of weird-but-true news) • The Best Week Ever, on VH1 (comedians joke about news, pop culture) • Maddox.xmission.com (raunchy riffs on pop culture, news, random subjects)

President George W. Bush, Miller reported, has a new education initiative: The "No Child Left Without Automatic Paper Towel Dispensers" Act. Republicans cheered the announcement, he wrote, even though the president "failed to actually say anything about learning."

So it goes when teenagers read The Onion.

Across Greater Cincinnati, they're logging on to its Web site, theonion.com, for weekly doses of absurdity, deadpan wit and serious news dipped in irreverence. Typical Onion headlines: "Psychic helps police waste valuable time" and "Bush urges Iraqis to pass amendment banning gay marriage."

Started in 1988 by a handful of guys in Madison, Wis., The Onion has a weekly print circulation of 369,000 and claims about 2 million Web hits a week. A disclaimer warns that its content isn't meant for juveniles, but high school students read it anyway.

In English class, they have learned that satirical writing is meant to bring about change. For all its silliness, The Onion has mastered a kind of gleeful prodding that strikes them as more truthful than real news.

"I think the most honest portrayal of someone is when you're making fun of them," says Eileen Tull, a junior at Indian Hill High School. With straight news, it's difficult to see where reporters got their information or what biases they bring to their work, she says.

"In a satire, everybody's getting attacked, most of the time. It's putting bias on everybody," Tull says.

At Indian Hill High School, about half the students are familiar with The Onion, she says, and student journalists recently spoofed school news with an Onionized edition of the newspaper. (Alert readers were tipped off by a small onion symbol on the front page.)

One story announced that another hill had been discovered in Indian Hill, forcing the school system to spend millions adding an "S."

In another piece, the writers played with their school's elite reputation. Under a new uniform policy, they wrote, students would have to spend $1,500 for one skirt and one top.

Interest is 'refreshing'

"This just shows a maturity you don't always expect at the high-school level," says Cynthia Coultas, the journalism adviser at Indian Hill.

"It's refreshing to me. They see things that aren't right, and that through parody or satire, you may provoke a change."

That's what Joe Garden likes to hear.

Garden is one of six full-time writers at The Onion. He knows it has caught on with high-schoolers, he says, because occasionally the paper gets a request like, "My son just became an Eagle Scout, and he loves The Onion. Can you do something?"

"So we send them an official Onion certificate of recognition that they became Eagle Scouts," says Garden, 34.

Adolescence is when young people start recognizing hypocrisy, he says. If they choose to swim upstream, it can be lonely.

THE ONION SAYS (HEADLINES)

• 'Senatorial Candidate Introduces New Low-Carb Platform' • 'Woman Looks Great for a 32-Year-Old' • 'Cheney Wows Sept. 11 Commission by Drinking Glass of Water While Bush Speaks' • 'Sea Claims Flip-Flop' • 'Longtime Heckler Just Kind of Fell Into Heckling' • 'Study: Owning a Boat Not Worth It' • 'Furniture Store to Pay Employees Nothing Until 2005' • 'Judge Orders God to Break Up Into Smaller Dieties' • 'Why Do Porn Actors Have to Use Such Foul Language?' • 'Ashcroft Rejected by Newly Created Bride of Ashcroft' • 'Bush Actually President, Nation Suddenly Realizes'

"Then you find something like The Onion or Mad magazine or The Daily Show, that picks at the social order a little bit and lets you know you're not alone in thinking like that," Garden says.

"I've always wanted to be to somebody what Mad magazine was to me when I was growing up."

Teachers recognize The Onion's appeal, but they have to be careful. Its language is sometimes so coarse that school computers block the Web site from view.

At Clark Montessori High School in Hyde Park, English teacher Sally Lamping carefully reviewed an Onion story before showing a portion of it to her students.

The piece - a commentary on animal testing - presented an eyeshadow-wearing rabbit as the spokesmodel for a makeup brand. It gigged not only companies that test products on animals but also the sometimes over-the-top response from activists.

"We used it as a springboard for teaching Shakespeare, how Shakespeare uses satire to criticize ... society," Lamping says.

Students were assigned to find other examples of satire in popular culture. They loved it.

"We walked in giggling, like, 'What's going to happen today?' " says Simon Vila, 17. "We walked out, like, dying laughing."

At Cincinnati Country Day, Miller is so into the style that he has a backlog of parodies waiting to run in the school newspaper, The Scroll.

Even media skewered

Miller especially admires the way The Onion makes fun of media hype, taking mundane items and blowing them out of proportion. He quotes a favorite: "Area housewife forgets why she went downstairs."

Then there was The Onion's 9-11 coverage, a darkhorse nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. "Hijackers surprised to find selves in hell," one headline reported.

"America was grieving at the time, and they found things that were not too touchy," Miller says. "They were able to make a country that was in total shock laugh."

That's a goal worth pursuing, he says.

He'll start with towel dispensers.

What is 'The Onion'?

The Onion is a satirical newspaper that is published weekly on Wednesday. It is available at Joseph-Beth and other bookstores, $2. Or you can subscribe online at theonion.com.

A 52-week subscription is $49.95. See www.theonion.com for details.

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Email kgutierrez@enquirer.com