[colinhmit]

Anecdotally, I've noticed the onion uses certain phrases over and over again in articles - "area man" comes to mind.

Did you really train it to detect satire, or just the onion writer's conventions? How does it perform when trained on onion articles and tested against some non-onion satire publication?

[turdnagel]

Exactly. A bit of an exaggerated headline, no? The first paragraph basically refutes the headline. What was built was an Onion article detector.

[beal]

Article seems like its a thinly veiled ad.

[24gttghh]

All the bolding of text basically gives it away...

[DC-3]

Nailed it. How many Onion articles have you seen end with a quip of the form "at press time". The articles have a flavour all of their own, which is certainly quite distinct from the deeper satirical mood.