YU News Service was founded in 1980 as a counterpoint to Reaganism. It has since established several publishing imprints dedicated to varied works of social and political satire. It has a particular interest in the influence of religion, politics and popular culture on daily social life. These imprints include, among others: Poor Souls Press / Scaramouche Books, Little City Press, Johnny Get Angry, First the News Press, News From Outer Space, as well as collaborations with other independent presses, including Greydog Press, Wagon Train Books, Smakface, Poems For All Press and Mondo Editions.  

     Its first imprint, Poor Souls Press / Scaramouche Books (formerly Scarecrow Books) was established in 1976 by poet and satirist Paul Fericano. It was consolidated under YU News Service (Yossarian Universal News Service / YU) and co-founded in 1980 by Fericano and fellow poet and satirist Elio Ligi. Its effort were in direct response to Ronald Reagan's presidency. In 1984, promoting the fundamental beliefs in freedom of, with, and from the press, it registered with Editor & Publisher's Syndicated Services as a legitimate publishing enterprise. Offering full disclosure and complete transparency, it openly defined itself as "a professional parody news and information syndicate". Since then, YU News Service has been credentialed by agencies and organizations involved in government, law enforcement, education, religion, the arts and sports. Go figure.

    Predating The Onion and The Daily Show by several years, YU launched a series of satiric news stories as a counterpoint to an aggressive and reactionary Republican agenda. In 1982 it began offering its own press card for sale to anyone who applied for one. Throughout the eighties, YU's dispatches were published as bound "Briefbooks" and distributed to hundreds of diverse media subscribers in the U.S. and abroad, including The Los Angeles Times, Inside Joke, The Nation, Soho Arts Weekly, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Realist, Mother Jones, The Progressive, National Public Radio, Saturday Night Live, Punch (London), El Pais (Spain), La Prensa (Mexico), El Diario (Nicaragua) and Krokodil (Moscow). From mainstream publications to college newspapers to small press journals to throwaway shoppers, YU's unbylined syndicated stories appeared in hundreds of  publications from San Francisco to Berlin, from Tokyo to Bueno Aires, and often with with no other explanation to readers other than a notice identifying them as subscribing members of YU News Service. 

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       In 1984, The One Minute President, a Candide-inspired satire on the policies of the Reagan administration, was first published by YU News Service / Poor Souls Press in Germany with a U.S. edition of the book following two years later. In January, 1987, YU News became the first publishing and news organization to coin the term "Nancygate" to describe the Iran/Contra Affair, holding the First Lady accountable for allowing the President to sleep through both his terms.

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    In the nineties under Presidents George H. Bush and Bill Clinton, YU News continued to report on the growing conservative takeover, publishing a series of investigative reports on such luminaries and lunatics as Jerry Falwell, Charlton Heston, Newt Gingrich, Clint Eastwood, Rush Limbaugh, Pope John Paul II, Frank Sinatra, and the brain of former CIA Director William Casey.

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      After the theft of the 2000 presidential election, YU News Service issued regular weekly dispatches chronicling George W. Bush's first year in office. Three days after 9/11, YU was the first news organization in the country to identify Bush's crusade against terrorism as his re-election campaign war. Our weekly stories were received by thousands of email subscribers all over the world and posted online at ZNet Interactive. A collection of these stories, I, Terrorist: Dispatches from the Front, and published by YU News in 2004, was initially rejected by over twenty U.S. publishers at the height of Bush's popularity in 2002 - 2003.

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        From 2008 to 2016, YU News Service kept Barack Obama's feet to the fire but also had his back, issuing blistering satires on Republican efforts to de-legitimize his presidency and make themselves inconsequential. Our infamous interviews with Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, John Bohner, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and others, will be fully archived and available for access in the future at  Universal Times: Interviews with the Departed.    

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      In 2017, as Trump and the GOP colluded with alternative reality, Yossarian Universal doubled down. Beginning with Fericano's Bulitzer Prize-winning satire, Things That Go Trump in the Night, continuing with Ligi's Portland Pataphysical Outpatient Clinic Lounge & Laundromat, and culminating with The Suicide Notes (2020 - 2021),  speaking truth to power had rightfully morphed into speaking crazy to crazy.

       Today, in a disturbing political climate that many refer to as the dark and cynical days of American democracy, those who deny truth, hide from it, and are uncomfortable in its presence, will always be offended by satire. But if satire doesn't offend, particularly those who are offensive, then it's not doing its job. YU continues to do its job and do what it does best: to make us laugh and question why we are laughing.

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