October 05, 2017

Keli appears on Toronto's current affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, to discuss the uptick of satire in mainstream news. Interview by host, Nam Kiwanuka (pictured with Keli on this page).

Dailey and her team started with a live show (free for women) to see if the concept had an audience. The show, at the time, didn't yet have a name — and that was intentional. Everything was under construction, Dailey said, and she wanted to be transparent and let people be part of building it.

"I think that one of the things I learned is really respecting the intelligence of the audience is very important," she said.

If asked to do comedy full time after 15 years of "straight" journalism, most media types would be daunted. But not Keli Dailey.

When the UT graduate – a former San Diego Union-Tribune food writer and L.A. Times and Frontline contributor – entered Stanford as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, she wondered why there were no woman-led shows like The Daily Show. So she shopped for funding, got it, and launched News Hangover, producing and starring in satirical videos for six months.

The process gave her unique insight on the format's advantages. Now she's passing on that insight as a college professor and a presenter at SXSW.

"People like comedy news [because] they just really want you to come out and [tell them]: Should I like it? Should I hate it? People want you to be explicit in how you feel about things," she says.

As a journalist trained to remain objective, Dailey recalls, at first making the transition was "psychological."...

There's no handbook for DIY comedy news. And to invent a new show, re-imagining the comedy-news show format, while being consistently entertaining and reasonably insightful about current events? Huge challenge.

But we were really passionate about addressing what we saw as a problem: no one is making educational humor for our target audience - late millennial women. (We love them. And we want to give them so many tools to move into post-college adulthood...a period we call "starter lives.")

If the words “pizza” and “patriarchy” get your blood boiling, just wait until you watch Keli Dailey’s satirical sketch. She poses the question, “Must women always lean in?” What if a woman just doesn’t want to pick the toppings of a pizza?!

Workplace training videos are kind of a joke. How much attention do you ever pay to formal instruction videos? No one even watches the flight safety ones, and those are full of information that could save you as you plummet towards the ground in a firey crash.

Most of these videos are full of statements and clichés that are so obvious, there’s no reason not to tune out. (This is also true on the plane: “Please make sure your seatbelt is fastened whenever the seatbelt sign is illuminated.” Well, yes.) No one ever tells you what you really want to know about your new office: Where’s the good coffee? Can anyone work the electronic whiteboard? How many cats does Kate from accounts actually own?

So, News Hangover’s Keli Dailey decided we need a workplace training video that tells us about, you know, real workplaces. What if, she asks, there were a manual that told you how people actually behave at work? Cue ’80s music and spinning WordArt. The “Real Workplace Training Video” is here, in all its low-res glory...

Is The Daily Show only for men? Is Last Week Tonight mostly for dudes? Did The Colbert Report only speak to your dad?

Well, no. But satirical news shows are largely written by men, and the majority of their viewers are men. And that matters, because these shows have a real impact on what people understand about daily news and big social issues.

So one woman is doing something about it. And she’s hilarious.

In a media world full of choice for news content, news satire is doing more than drawing large audiences. Programs like The Colbert Report have gained so much popularity that they are, to some, a trusted source for political news and commentary. In her SXSW panel, Comedy is the New Journalism, the Power of Satire, News Hangover creator and producer Keli Dailey will discuss the viability (and effectiveness) of satire as a means of communicating the news.

News Hangover is smart, sharp, and funny as Keli and her guests use comedy and satire as a means to talk about current events, social justice, and other related topics. Keli is also a journalist who worked at the U-T San Diego newspaper as a food writer. She is a Stanford grad and self-described "black hipster".

This makes for a great conversation as Chauncey and Keli connect the dots on a range of issues from life on the "racism beat", to learning the craft of comedy, the challenges of talking to young people about feminism and race, popular culture, Louis C.K. and the movie Pootie Tang, as well as the challenges of putting together a show like News Hangover.