News Skim FAQ

November 4th, 2005 Posted in News Skim Stories

I used to write sporadically over at a website called Pointless Waste of Time, run by Dave Wong and John Cheese. Both are really funny ‘net comedians and good friends (or at least as close as you can get for someone you only know through the Internet).

Dave Wong came up with the idea of doing a feature called NewsSkim, where we’d rip apart the news in the vein of SNL’s Weekend Update or The Onion. So from 2003-2004, Dave Wong and I riffed on current events (the archive of which can be found here, though it’s pretty dated now).

One of the things I wrote for NewsSkim was the NewsSkim FAQ, which was ostensibly a “reader Q & A” type piece, but really just a platform for me to write idiotic things that had nothing to do with the question. The odd part about it — for me, anyway — is that years later, I still get emails telling me it’s one of their favorite all-time pieces.

I’m setting it up a bit much here — it’s just a collection of behind-the-scenes jokes and gags about disfigured balls, so it’s not going to change the way you feel about humor or anything. Still, it’s popular enough that it seems a little silly I’ve never had it up at JP.com. So here it is.

On a little more serious note, if Wong and/or Pinkerton are reading this, I was wondering how you write the News skim? Do you both just write up your own articles and pick the best to post, or do you email each other ideas? I ask because it seems to me that I can see a big difference in writing styles and I’m wondering if that is just in my mind.

henr3443

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Dear henr3443:

I am asked this question often by the three people who actually read News Skim — me, David Wong and my mother. The fact that David and I ask is confusing, as it implies that neither of us were paying attention. My mother asking, however, makes far more sense, as she can barely contain her pride in my position at Daily News Skim.

“When are you going to give me grandchildren, faggot?” she’ll say tenderly, and I will take this to mean she is curious what takes up all of my time and leaves me unable to fuck girls. I reply with a detailed overview of the inner workings of News Skim, and she never tires of hearing it.

But with so many curious to find out how an actual news outlet works — journalism students, fans, pornographers — perhaps it’s time to lay the inner workings bare for all to see.

I hope you find it informative, Henry. Perhaps it will give you the edge you need to find success in journalism, earning you the money to trade in the “3443″ in your name for that expensive hot-rod “y” you’ve had your eye on.

-James T. Pinkerton
Chief News Engineer, The Daily News Skim

HOW NEWS SKIM WORKS

Friday

The final News Skim story for the week is uploaded to the site. Wong and I spend the evening on the phone in front of the computer, scrolling through the page and reflecting on past highlights. In an effort to fish for compliments, I’ll tell Wong how much I enjoyed one of his stories. Wong, just not getting it, agrees.

“Yeah, totally. I loved that one too,” he remembers, recounting in loving minute-by-minute detail how he first thought of the idea and tracing it to its completion days later in finished form. I’ve gotten good by now at knowing if I’m about to hear a ten-minute recounting or one of the longer versions, where Dave starts breathing heavy while describing the jokes.

I use these occasions to catch up on levelling the shelves in my kitchen, resting the phone on the dishwasher. The soft mechanical hum of the machine in action convinces Dave that I’m deeply engaged in his stories.

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” the dishwasher will say.

“I find it hard to believe too,” Dave responds. “But I really wrote it in one night.”

His exhaustive recounting finished, I’ll once again pick up the phone and fish for compliments.

“I thought mine were pretty go–” I say, interrupted mid-sentence by the sound of a dial tone.

Saturday

Early on Dave and I agreed that Saturday would be our day off from the harsh creative grind of the Daily News Skim. “It should be a time of reflection,” he mused over the phone during one of our early intense and creative brainstorming sessions that would last into the night. “A time to be with our families.”

I point out that, as a result of a freak explosion while opening up a bag of potato chips last Thanksgiving, I have no family. Dave explains that he meant his families, though I suspect he just likes bringing up the tragedy.

Though Saturday is technically our day of rest, experience has taught me not to rest on my laurels, since David Wong is both sneaky and heartless. During News Skim’s first month I took full advantage of my Saturdays off, catching up on my favorite hobby (ice-fishing in the nude) or sitting down with a good book (Ice-Fishing Naked: Secrets of the Pros). But it turned out Dave had only suggested the time off to indulge in his deeply competitive nature, taking advantage of the Saturday rule to get a full day’s jump on me on news stories.

“But I told you last week I was going to interview Desmond Tutu,” I’d complain.

“I couldn’t reach you Saturday,” Dave explained, “And Desmond had a plane to catch. I had to conduct the interview myself.” I later lunched with Desmond in Paris and discovered the truth: Dave bumped Desmond to an earlier flight, making up a story about nerve gas and the need for him to get out of the country “while you still have the lungs to do so.” It marked the beginning of a ruthless pattern between me and Dave on Daily News Skim: he’d get the story, whatever stood in his way.

I now spend Saturdays reading the news, preparing myself for the newsweek ahead. I don’t write anything; I simply digest it and let it ferment, knowing the knowledge may prove useful during the hectic week ahead. I also use Saturdays to catch up on Hagar the Horrible. Due to my schedule I am unable to read Hagar during the week. Purists will argue that Hagar should be read as the author intended — serially, in daily installments — but I find reading five at once improves the sense of continuity and drama inherent to the series.

Sunday, 3:00 AM

Sunday is the big day; David usually wakes up at 3:00 AM, takes a brisk jog around the driveway, and then isolates himself in the News Skim War Room; his basement, refurnished to look “newsy” through the liberal application of yellowing newspapers, old-style typewriters and a giant picture of News Skim’s patron saint, Spider-Man character J. Jonah Jameson.

Sunday, 3:30 AM

I am paged on Dave’s speakerphone every Sunday promptly at 3:30 AM to discuss News Skim for the coming week. Due to the time difference, it is 10:30PM when I receive the phone call and I am just heading to bed, drunk and bloated from homemade plates of hot wings.

“Can we do this tomorrow?” I say, groggy and apologetic. Typical of his reputation for perfection, Dave flies into a rage. Every Sunday at 3:32 AM I am fired.

“You’ll never work in journalism again!” Dave yells, pacing around the War Room, livid and unpredictable. “I will use papier mache on your resume, fashion it into a mouth, and fuck your resume in the mouth! Why? Because you won’t need a resume! Why? Because you’ll never work in journalism again! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

Sunday, 3:52 AM

I have usually just drifted off to bed when I get a second phone call from John Cheese hiring me back.

“You just have to understand Dave,” John explains. “He’s multi-layered and complex.”

“Are you reading from a script?” I ask.

“Yeah,” John admits.

Sunday, 4:00 AM - Monday 4:00 AM

At 4:00 AM the speakerphone connects in the War Room, and does not turn off for 24 straight hours. This isn’t to say that we work straight through for 24 hours; Dave just wants me to listen to everything he does, “so you’ll learn.” From 9:00AM - 10:30AM, for instance, I must sit patiently and listen to the sound of Dave napping.

By noon the War Room is a flurry of activity, plotting out the news stories we plan to use for next week’s edition. We engage in what Dave calls “blueskying sessions”, spitballing ideas at one another and feeding off the creative energy. Typically Dave will not use any of my ideas, though he tells me he appreciates my input all the same. “Your ideas make me feel so much more confident about my own,” he explains.

Tensions run high throughout the afternoon and into the evening, as the mounting deadline leads to temper tantrums and debate. On any given Sunday I am fired a further eight to twenty-seven times, then re-hired by John some minutes later, reading from the same script.

“He’s multi-layered and—”

“Complex?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

As the evening turns to night and the night to morning, the new edition for next week slowly begins to take shape, as Dave — always the perfectionist — endlessly edits and re-edits the stories, paring them down until they are flawless and contain none of the sentences I’d originally written. Often he’ll get carried away and remove integral pieces of the stories in his efforts to achieve perfection; once he removed all the nouns, convinced they ruined the flow.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m…” he paused, trying to finish the sentence nounless. “…Very.”

As night turns to dawn, I typically spend my time fixing all of Dave’s edits, re-inserting our original drafts from that morning. Though I do this every week, Dave reacts every time with shock and betrayal.

“Judas!” he yells.

“You see, he’s multi-layered, Jay,” John explains five minutes later.

“I understand,” I say.

Monday-Friday

The latest edition is put to bed, and Dave and I get some well-deserved rest, knowing that our efforts were worth it—that, come Monday, readers will benefit from all of our hard work, reading the first sentence of our stories before losing interest and heading to the forum. This is the service we provide. This is journalism.

This is News Skim. And we fight in the trenches.

This is funny.

Kathana

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These aren’t questions. You’re making a mockery of my FAQ. A mockery.

Let me try. This is funny?

Honest Abe

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Dear Abe:

You would be surprised how often we’re asked this question here at the Daily News Skim. In fact, a quick count of the subject headers of the unread mail in my inbox gives me the following numbers:

1.) “Subject: Choke on my dick, Pinkerton”: 139 emails
2.) “Subject: Way to rip off Onion, you fags”: 122 emails
3.) “Subject: Wong, please get rid of Pinkerton”: 89 emails
4.) “Subject: Is this supposed to be funny?”: 75 emails

Clocking in at #4, “Is this supposed to be funny?” is a question that never seems far from our readers lips. The short answer is yes. It’s supposed to be funny.

This necissarily leads to the #5 question: “But then why isn’t it?” and is a much more difficult question to answer. A lack of creativity and a shortage of ideas are definitely factors, as well as a ridiculously unhealthy lack of concern for the News Skim reader base. But more important than any of these, I suspect, are my enormous balls.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not bragging, or in fact even happy about it. My massively swollen, disfigured testicles if anything terrify and confound women. Worse still, I have no idea why they’ve swollen to their current size. My doctor was convinced I’d hit them against something, but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that. He asked if I’d recently gotten bitten in the testicles by a spider or insect. I replied that while I reularly use my testicles to clear out hives of spider eggs and hornet nests in my tool shed, this has to date led to no bites.

In truth I’ve done absolutely nothing to my genitals that would cause swelling. One time while drunk I took off my pants, put a bicycle pump nozzle in my urethra and walked around my then-girlfriend’s work party with my hand on the pump, threatening to blow up my genitals unless given Chex Mix. But, as I reminded my doctor, I at no time actually pushed down on the pump.

It’s frankly confounding, and more importantly distracting when it comes to my News Skim duties. I find it difficult to write standing up.

As for David Wong, I don’t know what his reasons are. I can only say that yes, despite what your eyes are telling you, we’re trying to be funny.

-James T. Pinkerton
Head Scoops Technician, The Daily News Skim