Where 'The Onion' Meets 'The Simpsons'

This from The Onion editor-in-chief Scott Dikkers didn't make it into the profile of Simpsons showrunner Al Jean in the new issue ("The Real Mayor of Springfield"). But it's still worth sharing.

Back when The Onion went to press on Sundays, we would take a break to watch The Simpsons at 7 p.m. Invariably, there would be some joke in the show that was identical to a line in a story that we had slated for that week’s issue of The Onion, so we would stop the presses and write a new line so as not appear to be imitating The Simpsons. We knew that anybody picking up the paper 2 days later who had also seen The Simpsons the previous Sunday would assume we stole the joke, and we didn’t want that. This used to happen almost every week.

By Michael Malone