Hacker News Reader

Comment by ehsankia | Hacker News Reader

> The Onion, which created Click Hole, will remain a part of G/O Media.

It's a little strange. The Onion created Click Hole, but now click hole is safe but The Onion itself is still under G/O media. How did the employee split happen? Were they fully separate?

View on HN

I think the big picture is that The Onion has reached peak brand value, and its most profitable exploitation mode is to gradually lower content expenditures while maximizing revenue through ad-plastering.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's a general trend I've observed.

I got the feeling that The Onion had peaked and waned already a few years ago once they no longer produced steady video content. "Today Now", the coverage of the 2012 US presidential election and "Sex House" were brilliant, high-quality productions, but if the company couldn't keep it up that augurs badly for its business.

My goodness, I had completely forgotten about Sex House.

Just this month they released a Podcast and it's pretty good.

Indeed, I had been under the impression that ClickHole wasn't distinct from The Onion at all. I thought it was just a domain name they used for comedic effect, so that they didn't have to post under theonion.com/clickhole or something.

This, thought its just "The Onion, but Buzzfeed style instead of news site style"

They've been separate entities for years. The Onion under Univision became more of a digital production house. Editorial staff was always distinct. I presume that the handful of people leaving are writers, and they'll need to staff up around operations.

> the deal will allow ClickHole to bring on additional staff — it currently has only five full-time employees

Reply on news.ycombinator.com