“It was pretty much all my dad,” said Eddie, who will be going into his junior year at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., this fall. “My dad said he thought The Onion would be a great place for me to work.”

His father, Steve Small, wine manager at Yankee Fine Wine & Spirits on Queen Street, said Eddy has been enjoying his time at his internship.

“I like it a lot,” said Eddie, “It’s probably doing more for me than any class I can take, because it is more directly related with what I want to do.”

He sent his resume and cover letter out in January during his winter break from college, and heard back from The Onion in February. In March he showed up to his interview wearing a collared shirt and business slacks, and when he looked around he realized, “I was very overdressed.”

He said he has always like The Onion, which is a national publication and website that focuses on mostly fake news with a satirical spin. Some of The Onion’s recent top stories have included a robot holding a press conference for the Pentagon, Al Gore sending his son off the planet in a rocket to protect him from global warming, and other spoof stories.

To live in New York City, Eddie, who graduated from Newtown High School in 2006, said he cashed in on a stipend he was offered when he started school at Dickinson College. The internship is unpaid, but Eddie said he is getting by. On his first day at The Onion, he said he was used for a photo shoot to run with a story of homeless college students.

Eddie is a history major, and he plans on working on a concentration in European history. He is also the managing editor of his college’s weekly newspaper, The Dickinsonian, and after he graduates he said he might pursue a career in writing.  

The first time he heard about The Onion, he said he was on vacation with his father when he saw a book called, Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years Of Headlines From America’s Finest News Source, which is one of the published books from The Onion. Eddie said he asked his father to purchase it for him, and he has read it many times since. 

Everyday the daily content comes in and Eddie and other interns shift through to find information for the small daily features. He said that he also gets to sit in on brainstorming sessions, and he normally goes to the sports sessions.

“Everyone there is extremely friendly,” he said.

He and a couple of the other interns, he said, get to write weather jokes. All of the jokes are five to seven words long. So far he has had one of his jokes used, and he said it was, “What does it matter? It’s your Wii outside.”

He said the only aspect of the internship that his background as a history major helps him in, is fact checking.

“They do make references to real things,” Eddie said, “and part of my job is making sure those facts are right.”

The interns at The Onion also send jokes to Collegehumor.com, and they do other odd jobs, according to Eddie. When new furniture was brought into the office, Eddie helped to rearrange everything, he said.

“It’s just enough to remind me that I’m still an intern,” he said.

His experience has made him start thinking about lining up another internship for next summer. He had a meeting with his internship coordinator recently, and they decided something in print journalism or an internship at The Colbert Report, a satirical news program on Comedy Central, could be the next step.

“It would be awesome to be in New York City again next summer,” he said.

As far as a future job goes, Eddie said working for The Onion or something like it would be ideal.