When I was at Madison during that time, I applied at one of the 2 student papers to be a sales rep. I went on to be the Sales Manager for the paper. The guy I won out the job over decided to start the Onion with his friend.
You've never heard of me :-(
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When they first started, their sales tactic was that the paper was a small tabloid -ize, with the entire bottom 3 inches or so a double-column coupon book. So you just trimmed off the bottom of the weekly issue & went out to the bars/restaurants with it