The Onion isn't actually a newspaper at all, but an irreverent newspaper parody, a condiment prepared primarily for students and available free in town. And OK, it's not even produced in Colorado, though it's sendups sometimes have Boulder datelines. Its mainstay, irreverent lampoon news and feature stories frequently in bad taste are frequently very funny. It brings to vivid life the term “gag story.”
The Onion tends to recycle its content a bit, figuring its audience turns over completely every four years or so.
Primary form of humor: rrrude, but funny and often socially right on target. Its Webby award-winning site:
Westword, a free Denver weekly, isn't actually a Boulder paper either but it has long suffered under the delusion that Boulder is really a part of Denver and is widely distributed in the 2nd Be$t $mall City. As fat (plenty of ads) as it is sassy, it specializes in airing the dirty laundry and offbeat stories the more torpid Denver dailies won't cover. It's the paper Boulder Weekly would like to be. Like others of its type, it reviews pop culture in perhaps unnecessarily exhaustive detail. WW provides a complete vicarious Denver experience, perhaps removing any need to go there, perhaps even removing the need to go outside the house. Refreshingly, it is too tough-minded and professional to pimp New Age fads to its readers, and it seems better and better the more one reads Boulder's papers.
Primary form of humor (besides its essentially smartmouth style): raucous caricature.
The big, dismal, Denver dailies are also distributed in Boulder, but Mondo Boulderdoesn't have time to read them, and why should you?