Next week, the funniest poets at The Onion shuffled through lots of news reports at a meeting to figure out which headline may make visitors laugh harder.
” Future Up: 911 Operator Calmly Talks Woman Through Macarena”, suggested one writer, as his co-workers cackled. Another: “JD Vance Doubles Down on Controversial Condemnation of Childless Children”.
The headlines– all 52 of them– were entirely false, possible feed for the humorous news site. However, the jokers behind those tales are working on a real trial in the advertising industry, which seems to have been published in The Onion.
For the first time in more than a decade, The Onion may start printing copies this week and will soon be making them available to subscribers to its website quarterly. The shift is a tribute to the newspaper’s roots as a campus regular in the late 1980s.
It also serves as an example of a growing tendency in the advertising business, which is attempting to find new ways to draw and keep electronic users.
The Onion is no stranger to the challenges that confront the printing industry. Its articles have followed the media industry’s tumult over the past few years, often making fun of itself:
The Onion:” A mild-mannered reporter immediately turns into an unbelievable poor man.”
The print edition is part of a variety of perks that the company plans to offer online subscribers, who pay$ 5 a month, said Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron. The company plans to offer invites to live events, access to The Onion’s archive of physical papers and sponsorship of ambitious editorial projects, such as a video titled” The Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking-Sheet Dinner”, Collins said.
” Do you know how many 10 woks value these time”? he asked. ” It’s not pretty”.
With the help of those membership add-ons, The Onion hopes to start making money later this month, according to Collins, whose business acquired the release in April.
At the same time, The Onion is reducing its emphasis on particular types of advertising. A month ago, it stopped running electronic ads from the business Taboola, a supplier of attention-grabbing connections. Most of the adverts in this week’s display version– for Ashley Madison, WeWork and Chick-fil-A– are false, but there are some legitimate promotions for The Onion. One of the adverts:” It’s That Shirt You Clicked On Again. We Found a Way to Following You Into Print Media, Too”.
The Onion: Every six hours there is a major change in the media scenery.
Over the past 10 years, The Onion has changed hands three days. It was bought by Spanish-language broadcast company Univision, online publication G/O Media and, this time, Global Tetrahedron. Along the way, there have been cutbacks, anxious contract negotiations and even the price of The Onion’s girl web-site, The AV Club.
But its 15 employees are hoping the worst will come to an end. Under the owner of Global Tetrahedron, Jeff Lawson, a co-founder of the software company Wether, the publication has enjoyed a relatively relaxed time.
After Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, purchased Time newspaper in 2018, Lawson said he had started making jokes with friends about buying The Onion. In earlier 2024, Lawson was introduced to a class interested in buying The Onion, including Collins, Leila Brillson, a previous TikTok administrative, and Danielle Strle, a product development professional.
” I said,’ I have$ 600– who wants to assist me obtain this?'” Collins said. He claimed that Lawson,” the just typical person in Silicon Valley,” made him feel fortunate.
Lawson claimed that he wanted to live off The Onion his entire career. The business may be turned round, he said, if it focused initially on satisfying its paying clients.
Despite having a shared love of satire, Lawson claimed that he had n’t spoken with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, about his purchase of The Onion. They had also spoken about a charge for the site at one place.
” Utterly, not all Silicon Valley people hang out in an evil mountain lair”, Lawson said.
The Onion:” Americans demand novel forms of media to bridge the entertainment gap while using laptops and phones.
The Onion may distribute its new print book the following week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where The Onion is based, despite Collins ‘ joke that the release was not authorized to handle the occasion.
The big influx of prominent journalists will make it a great chance to debut the print book, said Jordan LaFlure, The Onion’s professional editor.
LaFlure expressed his hope that the printing newspaper may appeal to a younger generation of customers, who had already begun to exhibit an attachment for analog alternatives to modern goods.
We can present those exact kids to the idea that a print publishing is a much richer way to consume media, LaFlure said.” I think for the same cause that 18-year-old children are buying Taylor Swift on vinyl,” LaFlure said.
The staff does n’t seem to share that enthusiasm for all publications. One of the front-page articles in The Onion this month:” New York Times to Stop Publication”.
