The Onion quits print | Hacker News Reader

The Onion quits print

chicagobusiness.com

121 pointsdanso73 comments

I'll shed a single tear because I have nostalgia for the print version, but this isn't really such bad news. The Onion has evolved, not died. They grew quite successfully into digital (especially with video & social media), and they're now completing that transition by cutting off what has by now become a vestigial distribution channel.

I feel the same way. I loved when The Onion was in print in SF, but now I subscribe to the blog on my Kindle, and as a result read it far more often.

I dunno, unless The Onion has an incredibly forward-thinking managerial class, then this cutback -- as well as the previous ones (including in its own hometown in Madison, WI) -- are reluctant measures taken in the face of budget shortfalls, i.e. these are cuts to the bone, rather than trimming the fat. And while fat organizations aren't exactly ideal, I think the expectation that the Onion maintains its finest group of writers while going through this kind of restructuring is unrealistic.

But to go back to the nostalgia thing, I'll miss a world in which you could carry around a newspaper made up of completely fake news.

In this case would you rather they allocate budget to a print edition, or use that same allocation for writers?

The OP was about cutting the print edition, and I'm hard pressed to believe there were any articles exclusive to the print edition.

As some might say, nothing of value was lost.

The latter, of course. My point was that if The Onion is at all like any organization, particularly in print media, then its cutting of the print editions is less a forward-thinking move than a "Shit, well, gotta do what we can to survive"...It's not that cutting to survive is bad, I'm just saying that it's a situation in which what actually survives the cutting still has a major fight to survive ahead of it, and will likely not equal what it was in better days.

The Onion hasn't really been in the print business since 2010, when they made it a franchise operation: http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/you_too_can_own_a_piece...

Reading The Onion every Saturday morning at the diner was one of my favorite habits. Their brand of satire works so well in the context of a traditional newspaper.

Since they shut down print in New York City, I missed that a lot. I tried looking at the web site on a tablet over breakfast, but the presentation ruined it for me.

While I was an avid reader of The Onion since college in the '90s, I've moved on. The web site just isn't as funny—partially because their writing has deteriorated, partially because it's just a web site.

I guess they'll continue to show up in my Facebook feed as friends from high school forward their stories with lots of emoticons and LOLs all over them. Maybe I'll look now and then, like I'd look at something from Cracked, The Chive, The Oatmeal, or whatever. Shame to see them go out with a whimper.

I think it's pretty disingenuous to compare The Onion to the Chive and the Oatmeal, with which it has almost nothing in common, and say they're "going out with a whimper." 20 years ago, newspapers were how people got their news, so the Onion imitated it. Now, people get their news via the web and cable news channels, both of which they are also imitating. They've shifted their priorities away from your preferences — that's not the same as surrendering.

Their videos are great, especially their series genre parodies. Sex House and Onion Talks are my favorites. Their brand of surreal/sardonic humor translates well to television.

Sex House is the pinnacle of entertainment.

There are a few fast-casual restaurants around Denver that I specifically go to knowing that I could read the Onion while eating a meal, it's sort of a shame to lose that. There are local papers too like Westword that I've fallen back on but the Onion was always top of the list.

I absolutely disagree. In recent years, I've found that The Onion has tightened up their news cycle considerably; they're addressing current events with more vigor and volume than ever without sacrificing their wit.

I live in Madison where reading the Onion in print was just sort of something one did! It was a sublime experience, and a lot of its satirical focus came from the newspaper form. The articles would be cut out and put on refrigerators or bulliten boards. The website is just not the same!

Yup, I was floored when the waitress at the Marigold Kitchen downtown brought me my meal and a copy of the Onion!

The Onion was in print??

Yeah, it was free paper in certain cities like nyc.

And almost everywhere in Wisconsin.

They've actually been around since 1988, initially only in print. I have personally never seen a print copy, either.

One of my high school teachers had stacks of Onion compilation books in the classroom.

I was kicked out of that class more than once.

I picked it up in Boulder a number of times.

Print was nice for all the reasons that any printed newspaper is nice--browsability, crosstalk between stories, portability, no power/screen required. Bummer that they had to cease print.

But if it wasn't sustainable, it wasn't sustainable.

I had no idea either. Crazy.

Yup. I've picked up a few. I want to say I've seen them in San Francisco, in their own newspaper boxes.

The Onion was a great perk of going to school in Madison (where it originated.)

It was mainly in the mid west, they used to distribute it in Minneapolis up until like a year ago. It was a free deal that was in most places where you find community papers (Coffee shops, bars, etc.). I really enjoyed getting the new issue every Thursday. It was also cool that the AV Club section had a lot of local content.

Doesn't shock me that they went this route, they had been dropping print cities pretty quickly.

True story: in the '90s, I used to buy print editions of the Onion for $1 at the Tower Records at Bay and Columbus in SF.

How times change.

Whenever I'm in Santa Cruz I pick up a copy of "Comic News" - they typically are in a newsrack machine with a broken coin mechanism. (There's a hole that you put your $1/copy into, honor system.)

http://thecomicnews.com

There is absolutely nothing like print for some things...

While I do like that everything is moving towards paperless, I hope we keep archives of all our knowledge in some permanent form. Should a world wide power failure or some other catastrophic event occur and we were "sent back to the stone age", the amount of knowledge we would lose from losing the internet is unimaginable.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-project-to-preserve-hum...

This was meant for a different scale of time but could be useful in an NBC's Revolution type of scenario.

If humans were still around after being sent back to the stone age (without 100% infrastructure destruction), how long would it take to figure out how to generate enough power to boot a computer? I would hope that there are enough humans who know what electricity is even at a basic level to be able to get some generators running within a couple of years. Even still, there should still be a few power sources left that would just require fuel and the flip of a switch.

If it's catastrophic enough that the event destroys all of our computers and generators forever, I would be doubtful that humans would still be around in any capacity where knowledge would be an important factor.

It's not just booting a computer though. Hypothetically, if Silicon Valley is wiped from the planet tomorrow at the same time as a massive EMP killing all electronics on earth simultaneously (extreme), its assumed we could get most of that data back. I'm guessing we'd lose a significant amount of information though.

The real loss would be the engineers -- without people manning these systems I'm not sure we're getting that data back very quickly. What if you lose the key players -- the people who have the passwords, the knowledge, and control over these systems? It's losing the combination to the worlds most valuable vault, but the vault is digital and restoring it takes privileged information.

That's true. I would assume that we would be able to regain most of the basic "this is what makes us the 21st century" information. Almost everything else, in my mind, would be of questionable value to the new society. If Facebook went dark, if Google went dark, Yahoo, Microsoft, hell even Wikipedia; yeah there'd be significant loss and it would take a long time to recover from. But the benefit of the information age versus the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is that you can't just destroy the Library and all that knowledge is gone. There's a wealth of information and culture on my computer alone. If the biggest sources of knowledge were gone tomorrow, individuals would be able to rebuild the basics of the information age very quickly. We might be set back to 1970, but without the literal decimation of the human population, there's no way we'd be set back to the stone age.

It's just a matter of time before someone starts a service to print out all of these online-only sites so you don't have to read them on a screen.

Ideally in broadsheet or tabloid form, with layout that can be specified by the content producer!

A long time ago, I held edition #1 of this paper in my hands while attending school in Madison. Then, in a complete lack of foresight, I threw it into the trash. Still, it's good to see that campus paper have done so well.

Aw man! I live in Chicago and there are soooo many Onion news stands; one right next to each legit stand like the tribune. And they always kept it up to date, which always made their joke that much funnier.

In a way this is too bad, in the 90's I'd always pick a copy when I visited friends in Madison, WI.

But it also isn't very surprising. Free print publications are entirely reliant on print ads, which have have been having significant downward treads.

Wait, this isn't a fake Onion headline?

I guess that's why the link is to another news source; no one would believe it if it was announced by their website.

Irony abounds.

Awww, that's sad. I always like being able to pick up a print version when I visited "the big city".

I seriously thought an Onion reporter made a joke by feeding a fake story about their print version to the Chicago Business people. I suppose when you cry wolf...

The whole article reeks of the same satire The Onion puts up every day, I thought the same thing.

Passersby will never again be amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.

My favorite filler text of all time.

As a Canadian who's never seen or even heard of a print edition of the Onion, it blows my mind that they've been around since 1988. I thought they were just a website. Even then I'm surprised the site has been around since '96. Even that's older than I would've expected.

I happened to stubble upon one while I was walking in downtown Toronto. I was just as surprised as anyone.

This is a huge bummer. Whenever I don't have anything to read on the subway I grab the latest Onion.

With how much the Onion appears on Facebook feeds, it has successfully evolved.

I do have to admit I was wistfully looking for this hint as a spoof, but I believe it's true. I miss grabbing the hardcopy in lieu of a watered down mini-newspaper on the way to the subway.

Since many are surprised by The Onion's rich history, I'll pass along a link to the Internet Archive for some satirical spelunking...

https://web.archive.org/web/19970107125931/http://theonion.c...

https://web.archive.org/web/20000601000000*/http://TheOnion....

I remember in the late '90s when the latest edition of The Onion would show up on the website every Tuesday (correct me on the date if I am wrong, it's been awhile). The server could not handle the load and would be extremely slow for the rest of the day.

I was excited to finally read The Onion in print when they debuted in NYC many years later. Glad they are still alive in some fashion.

I did not know they had a print version.

The only time I every read the print version was in Chicago, where a street hustler gave everyone in my party free copies, and then followed us asking for money.

I don't expect that's the most common use case of a free paper, but were I _The Onion_ I would find it irksome.

I was kind of surprised by this. My impression was that they did well in college towns by sucking up all the advertising for local concerts and watering holes. I guess the local revenues weren't enough to offset the costs.

I get it, but this makes me sad. I've been picking it up in Austin for years.

Print version?!? Wow - who knew. I guess Chicagoans.

Guess that means no more homeless people trying to sell me copies of The Onion on the street. Back to stolen post cards it is!

The worse thing from all of this, is that now we will not have any permanent The Onion records, nor an archive.

Paper beats Silicon.

I never even knew the Onion did print. Hell I never even knew they were alive since what, 1988? Damn, I really thought the Onion was just a small little website with funny articles I saw on Reddit once in awhile, but not a widely known website.

Sucks, I'd have loved to read a print version of the Onion.

I know they at least use to have a few coin operated newspaper vending machines on street corners in Philadelphia. Not sure about elsewhere, I only ever noticed them in Philly.

Are you sure they were coin-op? Everywhere I've ever seen them, they were free. They were definitely in a ... well, I don't know what you call the newspaper distribution boxes, but they were in one (presumably to protect against rain and such), but they were always free to take everywhere I've seen.

They very well may have been free, I'm not sure. That same general sort of machine though at least.

Ah. Well there goes the idea I had in which they charged for it everywhere except DC (which would have been hilarious).

I believe they were free, or maybe the box...thing was just broken. I remember being amazed seeing The Onion in a printed version when I was in Philadelphia for a bit (I live in Belgium), always just assumed it was but a site. Saw them outside the Superfresh on South and 10th, I believe.

It started out in print, founded back in the late '80s by a couple of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They were smart and jumped on the web very early (the mid-90s), which helped them build a national audience instead of just a local upper-Midwest one.

I'll toss in my "isn't life weird?" story...

When I was at Madison during that time, I applied at one of the 2 student papers to be a sales rep. I went on to be the Sales Manager for the paper. The guy I won out the job over decided to start the Onion with his friend.

You've never heard of me :-(

----

When they first started, their sales tactic was that the paper was a small tabloid -ize, with the entire bottom 3 inches or so a double-column coupon book. So you just trimmed off the bottom of the weekly issue & went out to the bars/restaurants with it

Man that's something that would stick with you forever. Ugh, not recognizing opportunities in their infancy always scares me.

Or, to flip this on its head - remember this tale the next time you miss out on a job to 'the other guy'. Perhaps it will be a trigger for your own personal Onion moment.

Personally, I think he should feel great. There's no guarantee he would have done something so remarkable if he had been the one to lose the job, but he indirectly helped get The Onion started this way.

That's the attitude!

Personally, I just think it's an interesting story I bore people with at cocktail parties.

I think people who are inclined to "start the Onion" tend to do so anyway; he may have done it on the side, or in a slightly different manner, but he would have done something similar. I don't think I really had any direct affect on his life's fate or karma

I enjoy reading The Onion. I thank you for your sacrifice. ;)

Didn't realize this comment would get so much attention. I'll just add in passing, at this same time, Anthony Shadid was over at the 3rd paper (The Daily Cardinal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Shadid

Wow. I thought Onion was something people found in the mid 2000s and got viral because it has all the crazy fake but extremely hilarious weekly review. Does the print version makes those fake news or legitimate news report?

Might be due to locality. I was a fan of the Onion a long time ago, from their website, but it wasn't until I moved away from podunk Memphis, TN and into the DC-area that I ever saw a print copy.

Not surprisingly, they're pretty pervasive (or, I guess were is more correct now) in the DC area, which is somewhat amusing as DC is the target of so much of their humor.

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