God gets much-needed PTO, thanks to the satirical publication Big News Now

A few years ago, when Jon Klaverkamp started writing a satirical newspaper called Big News Now, he wasn’t sure how to find an audience for it.

He’d already gone the Facebook route with a previous satire project, amassing more than 9,500 followers in the mid-2010s. But Klaverkamp, 65, was sick of the internet, and of feeling like he needed to pay Facebook to boost his content.

At first, he went with an old-fashioned approach: print — and a deft hand.

“I was sneaking [Big News Now] into coffee shops, putting it in magazine racks, Walgreens, on piles of newspapers,” Klaverkamp said. “I felt like a criminal, probably illegally putting it in places … I didn’t have the courage to actually ask the owners if I could do it.”

But in a twist, Klaverkamp got his big break with a different social media channel: Reddit, the popular online forum that’s becoming a key platform for media of all stripes.

There, Big News Now has been a hit for months thanks to Klaverkamp’s son posting an occasional edition in Minnesota and Twin Cities-based groups (called subreddits).

“He put it up on Reddit one time, he didn’t even tell me,” Klaverkamp said. “He calls me up, says, ‘Dad, you’re exploding online. You’re super popular.’”

An October 2024 edition racked up almost 1,000 upvotes and more than 100 comments in the Minneapolis subreddit with a leading story that declared, “God to take first ever vacation this December, using three weeks of accrued paid time off.”

Meanwhile, in science news, scientists were “baffled by discovery of petrified meatball in new collection of moon rocks.” 

Said one of many appreciative Reddit comments: “A friend of mine found one of these at the Dakota where he works and brought it to me saying, ‘You love local kitsch, this looks right up your alley.’ And you know what? He was right.”

Riding that momentum, Klaverkamp now has a weekly Substack newsletter for Big News Now with more than 1,600 people subscribing since October. The satire is still old-school, keeping the form of a broadsheet newspaper with the tagline, “breaking news and repairing it.” (Photos are AI-generated.)

His success, though smaller scale, points to how current events may be changing some people’s taste for comedy. Jokes about dinosaurs going extinct because of erectile dysfunction? Wired. Political jokes? Tired.

“I did another Trump story or something, and then I got a couple comments saying, ‘Please, we’re tired of the political stuff,’” Klaverkamp said.

Born to write

Klaverkamp, raised in St. Louis Park and now living in south Minneapolis, was always going to be a writer. His first job out of college was at the publishing giant Random House, where he dreamed of having a hit book.

He was like “the millions of ambitious young writers, they think they’re going to write a novel that’s going to just shatter the world and impress God and man,” Klaverkamp said.

Over the years, that dream fizzled out. Instead, he wrote his way through a career ranging from nonprofit public relations (including a stint writing about Russia in the 1990s) to journalism. 

Throughout it all, satire has been a passion. When he was a reporter at the Hibbing Daily Tribune (now the Mesabi Tribune), Klaverkamp also had a satire column. 

In the early 2010s, after leaving a job as a high tech recruiter and working on a farm, he and his wife created “The Parsnippety,” a plant and animal-based political satire project. 

Headlines included, “Trump fails in first attempt to eliminate the working class,” and, “Animals declare war on humans as battles rage on three continents.” After getting exhausted with political news, though, “The Parsnippety” stopped publishing in 2017, but Klaverkamp wasn’t done with satire.

“It’s just the type of writing that I am drawn to,” he said. “There is so much earnest political [and] social commentary. It’s just a mountain of the stuff … and I love the idea of social commentary, criticism, but having it be funny.”

With Big News Now, Klaverkamp tackles some of the deepest anxieties of today, often inspired by science and news.

Worried about AI? Be horrifyingly amused by a story about a SWAT team that rescued a Minneapolis “couple held hostage by [an] AI-powered toaster, which had achieved consciousness.”

Meanwhile, reassure your community with the opposite of an obituary (or an “op-bit”) for people to make it known they are not, in fact, dead yet. 

The news industry also gets skewered, like a flip-flop illustrating the tension newsrooms can feel between sustainability and independence. One Big News Now edition declared, “We accept no payment and reject all donations.” Another was on the hunt for a “donor of immense wealth and generosity.” 

Politics still get a kick, but with a broader focus (and maybe some wishful thinking). The leading story in March was about how “car-sized hairy spiders emerge from UFO and devour U.S. government.”

Hard work for laughs

Klaverkamp’s son, when posting on Reddit, likes to describe Big News Now as a project by his retired dad.

But Klaverkamp sure doesn’t feel retired. “I’m working harder than ever in my life at this, cranking out one a week,” he said. 

And the project is a family affair. Alongside his son’s Reddit boosts (“What kind of writer is totally dependent on his son?” Klaverkamp jokes), his wife is foundational to the project.

“My office is upstairs, [hers is] downstairs, so I’ll come down with a rough draft, sit on the couch, and I’ll read it aloud to her,” Klaverkamp said. “She’ll have this dreary face, and I [say], ‘That wasn’t funny?’ And she goes, ‘That’s not funny. Go back up.’”

As for the business model, Klaverkamp is still figuring out what he wants to do with Big News New. The Substack is free, but with a newsletter he has the option of asking for donations or, eventually, putting up some kind of paywall for sustainability.

That’s a future concern, though — for the moment, Klaverkamp is all about attracting the audience and being funny.

Still, writing quality satire week after week can be difficult. Sometimes his son helps by mentioning the struggles that younger generations have, like the lack of affordable housing.

That inspired a story about “an alien Realtor coming down, offering cheap, quality housing elsewhere in another universe,” Klaverkamp said.

Klaverkamp also leans on his fascination with God and religion, often depicting the ultimate higher power being exasperated and fed up with humanity’s failures. He also finds ways to address serious topics, like the loneliness crisis, with comedy.

But “every issue, I worry that I’ll hear from people saying, ‘You know, Jon, you’re falling off. This has no edge to it. This is not worth publishing,’” he said.

Judging by Reddit responses, Klaverkamp still has the goods.

One commenter said they have an edition hung up in their office. “Genius and whimsical and perfect,” said another. People regularly say they’ve found print copies around the Twin Cities (unsurprisingly, many are seen at coffee shops).

“My favorite comments are when people say…’I had a bad day today. Thanks for this piece. You made me laugh,’” Klaverkamp said. 

“Even by touching on these issues about despair and anxiety, to deal with it kind of in a real way, but make people laugh at it — I feel like I’m a therapist.”

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