Tim Keck

Timothy A. Keck (born 1967) is an American newspaper publisher and satirist, best known for co-founding the satirical newspaper The Onion in 1988. After selling it the following year, he founded the free, weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger in 1991.

Early life Keck was born in Indiana in 1967 to Edward and Janet Keck. His father was a news editor and columnist for The Hammond Times whose family of Volga Germans had fled Ukraine during the 1940s to escape Stalinist deportations, while his mother was its star environmental reporter. After Edward died in 1978, Inland Steel Company executives pressured The Hammond Times to force Janet into resigning. Janet moved the family to Omro, Wisconsin, to care for her father and edit the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh magazine.

Career Like his mother, Keck attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison. To pay for college, he partnered with cartoonist James Sturm to sell monthly calendars featuring characters from Sturm's comics in The Daily Cardinal student newspaper. In 1988, Keck co-founded The Onion with Christopher Johnson using $3,000 in seed money from his mother. The idea for a newspaper of fake stories came from The Daily Cardinal 's annual April Fools' Day parody issue.

The following year, Keck sold The Onion to Scott Dikkers and Peter Haise for $19,000. Keck used the proceeds to repay a loan, then spent the next six months holidaying in Brazil, before returning to the United States where he settled in Seattle with the intent of founding a free, weekly alternative newspaper. Political views As of 2011, according to The Seattle Times, Keck was "largely unknown in Seattle".

Personal life According to Keck, he has dyslexia and sleepwalks, and he is a recreational user of marijuana.