This article reminded me of my internship with Saturday Night Live. At that point in my life I was extremely attentive to the actual news, not just getting my daily dose of information from South Park. One of my jobs every single morning was to lay out five different publications of news papers for the writers and cast members. The television sets around the office were always tuned to CNN. It was the most politically informed time of my life. It was important for my job to know what was going on. If I wanted to ne day work in the same office I had to be informed directly from the "real" source of the media because the parodies had to be created from that real. To quote Baym, "Any notion of fake depends on an equal conception of real." The news parody began with SNL's Weekend Update and from there spawned, The Daily Show/Colbert Report, ect. Packets of real headlines would be emailed to everyone in the office so you could write your own punch line to it. Again- these were real headlines that if you did not know the backstory you would not be able to successfully write a funny punch line. Since I returned to college and now do not run around getting coffee and news papers for NBC I find myself still informed but on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of being at the source of information aiding in creating these parodies I once again watch them to be informed.
This SNL weekend update was written solely by Amy Pohler during my internship and is a great example of media, comedy, and the fake/real news. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/update-palin-rap/773781
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