When Scott Dikkers was the editor of The Onion in the late 1990s, the satirical newspaper published a series of holiday cartoons mocking Christianity.
In one, the Easter bunny was crucified. In another, child molestation references dogged Catholicism, Dikkers said.
The cartoons drew ire from a man who sent "manifestos calling for us to be killed," Dikkers said. Then one day, the man believed to be behind the threats walked into The Onion's offices, which were in Madison, Wis.
The office didn't have a security guard, Dikkers said. But he reasoned with the man, who ended up leaving the offices peacefully. Later, the man was spotted on the street passing out the manifestos with the death threats against The Onion, so the newspaper got a restraining order against the man, Dikkers said.
"It was scary but it's like the 0.1 percent of anybody's job that is scary," said Dikkers, who worked for The Onion on and off from 1988 to 2013 and recently developed the curriculum for Onion coursework at Second City.
Dikkers, who lives in Ravenswood, said he was "heartsick" when he heard the news about the 12 people killed in a Wednesday attack at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which was known for lampooning Islam.
Dikkers said he rarely worried about violence against The Onion even after the newspaper received death threats. The newspaper didn't get a security guard until it moved offices from Madison to New York City in 2001, Dikkers said.
The Onion moved to Chicago in 2012 and now work from a building with security, Dikkers said. Current Onion staffers did not return requests for comment.
When The Onion began in 1988, the newspaper hoped for a strong reaction from readers, Dikkers said.
"You want to provoke a strong reaction because then you know the satire is working," Dikkers said. "Obviously we don't want a violent reaction because that's just uncivilized. We hoped for people to sue us and for people to get really angry with us and that happened a lot and we were delighted."
Dikkers said The Onion didn't change its policies to assuage angry readers when he was editor and he expects The Onion will maintain the status quo despite the French attacks.
On Wednesday, The Onion published an article about the attacks with the headline, "It Sadly Unclear Whether This Article Will Put Lives At Risk."
Dikkers said satirists should be protected but there's no need "to go overboard" with armed guards.
"The freedom to write what we want to write is our right," Dikkers said. "It's the First Amendment, and it's important."