There’s comedy, and there’s news, and then there’s that amalgamation of the two — call it satire or lampoonery or, in the parlance of Jon Stewart, “Fake news.” But how does it get made? And does it help or hurt if your background is in real news?

Last month Brooke moderated a discussion of writers and producers from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, convened by The New School in New York City. Representing The Daily Show are journalists and bloggers Daniel Radosh and Dan Amira; for The Nightly Show, writer Cord Jefferson (who actually just left the show to be a writer on Aziz Ansari’s Master of None); and for Full Frontal, producers Sanya Dosani and Naureen Khan, both of whom came directly from Al Jazeera America.