Sept. 21--Chicago-based humor website The Onion is going Hollywood with the launch Monday of StarWipe, a takeoff on TMZ and other celebrity gossip sites.
It may be hard to tell the difference between reality and parody, with StarWipe mining actual celebrity news, and adding The Onion's uniquely offbeat perspective to color the stories.
"TMZ is mostly baseless speculation and completely invented lies," said Sean O'Neal, editor of StarWipe. "We're certainly no different, but ours doesn't make you feel dumb for having read it, hopefully."
One of the stories featured on starwipe.com Monday ponders what a pregnant Kim Kardashian might do with the placenta of her second child, a hotly debated topic on several gossip websites, with some speculating she might use it as a beauty cream. StarWipe suggests it might also make a great all-in-one shampoo/conditioner or nice low-calorie salad dressing.
StarWipe is The Onion's latest foray into clickbait Web parodies, following last year's ClickHole, a BuzzFeed-like site filled with time-wasting listicles and quizzes that humorously insult the reader's intelligence.
The Onion was founded in 1988 by students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and grew to national prominence by parodying the gravitas of newspapers with satirical headlines and stories, like "Drugs Win Drug War." It staked out online turf in 1996 with the launch of TheOnion.com, sharing content between print and digital.
The Onion relocated its editorial operations to Chicago in 2012 and went all-digital the following year. The company has expanded into a variety of digital platforms, including Onion Labs, an in-house advertising agency, and The A.V. Club, an entertainment publication.
The Onion, The A.V. Club and ClickHole have a combined audience of over 30 million monthly unique visitors, according to the company.
O'Neal, 37, has been senior editor of The A.V. Club for the past two years, a role he will maintain with the launch of StarWipe.
Unlike The Onion, which creates fake news stories, StarWipe relies on real celebrity news for its content, and lets its writing staff take it to a higher level of absurdity.
"Celebrity gossip is already really ridiculous," O'Neal said. "There's no need to make things up."
rchannick@tribpub.com
