The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. It comes included with the print editions of The Onion, and maintains its own separate website. Unlike its parent publication, The A.V. Club is non-satirical. Nonetheless, it strives for a humorous tone. It reviews newly released films, books, comics, music, DVDs and video games, publishes an array of regular features and includes its own crossword puzzle. The online version of the A.V. Club, in addition to the regular articles, features the comic strip Red Meat and the syndicated sex- and relationship-advice column Savage Love by Dan Savage. Though Savage Love and Red Meat may be found in some of the print incarnations of the A.V. Club they are absent from others, usually as a result of their having been syndicated by other publications prior to the A.V. Club’s arrival in these cities.
The A.V. Club, as bundled with The Onion, is distributed in print form, free of charge, in Madison, Milwaukee, New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver/Boulder, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, and Washington, D.C.. Following a recent redesign, the eight print versions of The A.V. Club have subsections called A.V. (City) (e.g. A.V. Milwaukee) that include comprehensive event previews, regular features, and dining guides. This section also features regular special issues with even more content (e.g. “Summer Concert Guides”). The print redesign also saw the addition of more comics, including a strip called “Postage Stamp Comics” by Too Much Coffee Man creator Shannon Wheeler, and “Wondermark” by David Malki. More additions are planned for the near future.
Regular features
Interviews with people from a wide variety of fields within entertainment and the arts, including authors, actors, musicians, screenwriters and even a team of taxidermists.
Reviews, classified into the following five categories.
Cinema
Music (recorded)
DVD
Words (traditional and graphic novels, as well as non-fiction)
Games
Special features
Most special features now occur on a weekly basis. They include the following.
Games of Our Lives, a column written by Wil Wheaton, with a somewhat nostalgic focus on early video games (both arcade and home console).
Commentary Tracks of the Damned, a focus on the commentary tracks that accompany DVD releases of critical and/or box office flops. In this feature, an A.V. Club writer summarizes the commentators’ explanations (or lack thereof) for a movie’s failure, often focusing on the subtext of the speakers’ words and highlighting instances of hypocrisy and pretension.
Films that Time Forgot, a generally lighthearted focus on B-Movies, with an emphasis on their place in cinematic and cultural history.
Random Rules, interviews based around mp3 players set to shuffle.
Inventory, a list of notable examples of works that follow a theme, such as "15 True Comeback Albums" or "The 15 People You Meet Listening To DVD Audio Commentaries"
The Hater, a column written by Amelie Gillette, with a focus on popular culture and celebrity news. As its title implies, the author of this column generally takes a sarcastic approach to celebrities and celebrity lives, but she also frequently criticizes the editorial practices of the magazines and tabloids that publish celebrity news. The Hater is updated regularly online—more or less daily and sometimes more than once in a day—much like a blog. The Tolerability Index, a weekly offshoot of The Hater, is also available online having previously been available only in print. The Index is akin to a hot-or-not style continuum, but substituting tolerable for hot and unbearable for not. In print, The Hater appears weekly, with content unique to the print edition.
A.V. Club Crossword, a crossword puzzle edited by Ben Tausig with often humorous pop culture clues.
Newswire, a frequently updated, blog-style reporting of pop culture news items. Links to full stories and often accompanying video are included.
The A.V. Club Blog, a more casual forum for the thoughts of the A.V. club writers. The Blog also gives readers the option to add comments of their own, frequently leading to discussions between the readers and the A.V. Club staff (only available on the online edition).File:Avclub.jpgThe A.V Club website
The Bulletin Boards, a forum open to any readers who wish to register. It allows readers to post their own thoughts and topics of discussion, or to comment on articles written by the A.V. Club staff.
History
The A.V. Club became separate from The Onion in the summer of 1993, making its debut as an entertainment section run by Stephen Thompson, then a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1995, The Onion underwent a redesign that included the debut of the A.V. Club name, a reference to the stereotypically geeky high school organization. The A.V. Club came to the internet more gradually throughout the mid- to late '90s; not all of the sections found in the print edition were immediately available online.
In December 2004, Thompson left his position as editor of the A.V. Club. He currently holds a position as an online music producer at NPR in Washington, D.C. Keith Phipps took over as editor of the A.V. Club upon Thompson's departure.
In July 2005, the A.V. Club’s website was redesigned, and the blogs and bulletin boards were added, allowing readers to respond and contribute their own thoughts.
In September 2006, the website was again redesigned, with content being added on a daily rather than a weekly basis.
Current Staff
Editor: Keith Phipps
Associate Editor: Tasha Robinson
Film Editor: Scott Tobias
Local Content Editor: Josh Modell
Head Writer: Nathan Rabin
Writing Staff: Andy Battaglia, Noel Murray, Scott Tobias, Amelie Gillette
Contributors: Donna Bowman, Kyle Ryan, Chris Dahlen, Wil Wheaton, Bonnie Ruberg
New York City Editor: Andy Battaglia
Chicago City Editor: Kyle Ryan
Madison City Editor: Scott Gordon
Milwaukee City Editor: Steven Hyden
Twin Cities City Editor: Christopher Bahn
Denver/Boulder City Editor: Jason Heller
Bay Area City Editor: Marc Hawthorne
Los Angeles City Editor: Liam Gowing
Books
In 2002, the A.V. Club released a collection of 68 interviews that had been featured in previous issues, entitled The Tenacity Of The Cockroach: Conversations With Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders (2002, ISBN 1-4000-4724-2).
