User:JesseRafe/Plague

The Plague is New York University's campus comedy magazine. Like many college humor magazines, The Plague often pokes fun at popular culture as well as campus life and the idiosyncrasies of New York University.

History
The Plague was founded in 1978 by Howard Ostrowsky along with Amy Burns, John Rawlins, Joe Pinto and Dan Fiorella, and is currently published once per semester. It is not NYU's first humor magazine, as The Medley was a humor magazine published by the Eucleian Society from 1913 to 1950.

The Plague has been mentioned in the book Writers Writing by English professors Lil Brannon and Melinda Knight as "hilarious", as well as been listed in The directory of humor magazines in America.

An excerpt from the 1980 issue was published in two Sherlock Holmes compendia, the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota and the French-language Sherlock Holmes dans tous ses états.

In the 1990s, "The Plague" interviewed pornographer Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw magazine. This lead to a complaint from an NYU employee to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and a subsequent article in the Washington Square News titled "Plague Staff Accused of Human Rights Abuse".

The magazine's office is located in the Kimmel Center where the student staff writes and lays out the magazine.

Material from recent issues has been highlighted in Page Six of the New York Post for its satire on topics from NYU President John Sexton to U.S. President George W. Bush.

The Plague, as it relies much on fake news satire à la The Onion, has over the years come into a friendly rivalry with campus newspaper, the Washington Square News. That the WSN frequently attempts an essay at humor on April Fools' Day makes the newspaper a target for parody, reports NYU's other newspaper, the NYU Local.

Notable alumni

 * Judah Friedlander, comedian, actor
 * Seth Greenspan, filmmaker and Skippy on 3-2-1 Contact's The Bloodhound Gang (TV series)
 * Glenn Hauman
 * David Alan Mack, screenwriter, New York Times best-selling author
 * Dan Milano, writer, voice actor on Robot Chicken and creator/performer of Greg The Bunny
 * Frank Sebastiano, Emmy-award winning writer for Saturday Night Live, rumored inspiration for Frank Rossitano on 30 Rock