Greg Beato writes, "type 'best practices for newspapers' into Google, and The Onion is nowhere to be found. Maybe it should be":

Are there any other newspapers that can boast a 60 percent increase in print circulation over the past three years? Yet as traditional newspapers continue to lose readers, only industry mavericks like the New York Times’ Jayson Blair and USA Today’s Jack Kelley have looked to The Onion for inspiration.

One reason The Onion isn’t taken more seriously is that it’s actually fun to read. In 1985, cultural critic Neil Postman published the influential Amusing Ourselves to Death, which warned of the fate that would befall us if public discourse were allowed to become substantially more entertaining than, say, a Neil Postman book. Today, newspapers are eager to entertain—in their Travel, Food, and Style sections, that is. But even as scope creep has made the average big-city newspaper less portable than a 10-year-old laptop, hard news invariably comes in a single flavor: Double Objectivity Sludge.

Too many high priests of journalism still see humor as the enemy of seriousness: If the news goes down too easily, it can’t be very good for you. But do The Onion and its more fact-based acolytes, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” monitor current events any less rigorously than, say, the Columbia Journalism Review?

During the past few years, multiple surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Annenberg Public Policy Center have found that viewers of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are among America’s most informed citizens. Now, it may be that Jon Stewart isn’t making anyone smarter; perhaps America’s most informed citizens simply prefer comedy over the stentorian drivel the network anchor-mannequins dispense. But at the very least, such surveys suggest that news sharpened with satire doesn’t cause the intellectual coronaries Postman predicted. Instead, it seems to correlate with engagement.

It’s easy to see why readers connect with The Onion, and it’s not just the jokes: Despite its “fake news” purview, it’s an extremely honest publication. Most dailies, especially those in monopoly or near-monopoly markets, operate as if they’re focused more on not offending readers (or advertisers) than on expressing a worldview of any kind.

The Onion takes the opposite approach. It delights in crapping on pieties and regularly publishes stories guaranteed to upset someone: “Millions Participate In Cuban Version Of ‘Survivor.’” “Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit.” “Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years.” There’s no predictable ideology running through those headlines, just a desire to express some rude, blunt truth about the world.

(Incidentally, the Onion's online videos are also often both very funny, and have absolutely first-class production values.)