Rather than pursuing distractions, O'Rourke meticulously listed various types of stories and advertisements found in the Lincoln and Omaha newspapers, aiming to create a parody using real journalists.

As described by writer Ellin Stein, "the parody succeeds in creating its own universe through an accumulation of interrelated detail.... [f]rom the classifieds to the obituaries to the movie ads":[1] The big headline of the Republican-Democrat refers to yet another attack by a notorious local criminal, the Powder Room Prowler, a menace still at large after several months despite his trademark high heels and bag over his head.

This local story is given far more attention than such minor (and faraway) events like “30,000 Feared Dead in India” and “Japan Destroyed” (which receives a bit more play because the tragedy “has marred the vacation plans of Miss Frances Bundle and her mother, Olive”).

[1]The parody also brought readers up to date with characters featured in the National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody (who were now almost 15 years older): Rich kid Woolworth Van Husen III is, unsurprisingly, in the family trailer business, while artistic Forrest Swisher is director of the “Dinner Theater in the Dell.” Elsewhere we learn that lone African-American student Madison Avenue Jones is a city councilman, class clown Herb Weisenheimer is now proprietor of “Hollerin’ Herb’s Psychopathic Chevrolet and Lunatic Used Cars,” and former beatnik and Dickinson grad Faun Rosenberg heads up a conservation group that is trying to stop hunters from shooting the wildlife that flocks to the warm (160 degrees centigrade) waters of the Lake Muskingum nuclear cooling pond.

[1](Kroger, of course, is the college freshman protagonist, played by Tom Hulce, of the comedy movie National Lampoon's Animal House, released in late July 1978, some months after the newspaper parody.)