E.F. Watley, Editor
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Josh Righter co-founded The Enduring Vision in 2000. |
Satire site The Enduring Vision, after almost seven years and over
2,000 articles, had pretty much run its course, thought founder Josh Righter. He officially retired
the Vision in 2007. Then, something unexpected happened: he ended up taking first place in the
3rd annual HumorFeed awards. A panel of writers and journalists selected his story, Ford To Market Car Bomb Models In Iraq,
as the top story of the year.
"Honestly, I had no real plans to come back until this whole award thing happened," said Righter.
"It's something that I've always had a love-hate relationship with, mostly because of the time commitment."
Righter, 23, who does website design and email management for a small marketing firm, founded Enduring
Vision with a friend while still in high school. He currently co-produces the site with Scott Borchert
and some occasional contributors, such as Michael Less, who provided the idea for the
winning story.
"To start with we just hoped that some other kids would read it and laugh," said Righter. "But
a few weeks later, one of the stories about a Playstation got linked on a Nintendo fansite, and we got a ton of hits."
As the years passed, the Enduring Vision's focus expanded beyond video games to encompass an increasingly
sophisticated range of political stories.
"We would dabble in politics in the early days, though our understanding of the political process
was pretty amateur," said Righter. "But current events drove us to take an interest and get better. I would
see something on the news and say 'I can't believe that guy just said that!' We really amped up our
political commentary as time went on."
Righter noted that, since he founded the Enduring Vision, the entire online satire community has evolved
as well, offering more diverse and sophisticated material today.
"HumorFeed has definitely grown since it started [in 2003]," he said. "I can remember a small handful of
sites having the same sort of stories each day... there wasn't the sheer diversity of websites that HumorFeed
has today." (Enduring Vision was one of HumorFeed's founding members.)
He also noted that satire has followed general shifts in Internet content, adapting to new multimedia
formats along with mainstream news outlets. The Enduring Vision itself produced a satirical
historical film, Winthrop and the Savages,
in 2006.
"Satire has not been immune to the trend in video that's hit the rest of the Internet hard," said
Righter. "I've also noticed the proliferation of satire masquerading as other forms, such as satirical
blogs. That's the great thing about satire - whenever there's a new trend, someone is always ready to
use it to poke fun... But I think there will always be an audience for written satirical news; we'll just
have to work harder to be heard over 'sexier' forms of humor."
Righter's plans for the future are uncertain, but receiving the award has revitalized his focus;
rebounding after a nearly year-long hiatus, the Enduring Vision has published several articles so
far in 2008 - with more potentially to come.
"I can't say where we'll be in a year, but it's my hope to continue updating when we can," said Righter.
"I know the world wouldn't be nearly as informed without us, so it's sort of my patriotic duty to update."
E.F. Watley is the current administrator of HumorFeed. His own site is the Watley Review.
