「经济学人」Back in black

A new era dawns for America’s self-declared finest news source

Facing a difficult media environment, the Onion, a satirical news organisation based in Chicago, announced in August that it was entering the subscription household-supplies business. In the glory days of media, writers could simply upload stories to a website and watch as eyeballs and advertising dollars flooded in. These days that is not enough, and the Onion has identified a potentially lucrative new source of revenue: regular deliveries of multipurpose layered cellulose fibres.

“Whether it is for lining cat-litter trays, wrapping gifts or rolling up to swat your enemies with, what the Onion offers is a solid, physical product,” says Ben Collins, the CEO of Global Tetrahedron, which owns the publication. It is even possible, he adds, to read it.

Mr Collins, a former NBC reporter who does indeed run the Onion through a firm called Global Tetrahedron, in fact said no such thing when The Economist visited its offices. But your correspondent hopes he will forgive the pastiche, because over a decade after its last physical edition rolled off the presses, the Onion is genuinely relaunching in print.

The first issue was published to coincide with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It featured an exclusive interview with Kamala Harris (voting for Donald Trump); news from the campaign trail (“Tim Walz Writes ‘Great Job’ On Supporter’s Baby”); and a heartening update on investment in Chicago’s public transport for convention-goers (“CTA Hoses Train Cars Down With Fresh Piss”). For $99 a year subscribers will get a print issue every month. It is, the Onion points out, cheaper than joining a cult.

The relaunch comes after several years in which the Onion, which began in 1988 as a student paper in Madison, Wisconsin, was owned by Great Hill Partners, private-equity firm, via a holding company, G/O Media. Earlier this year, with digital ad rates on the floor, G/O Media announced a fire sale of its titles. Some, such as Deadspin, a snarky sports-news site, saw their staff gutted by new owners.

When he heard of the sale, Mr Collins drew up an only semi-serious plan to buy The Onion and turn it around. “I just didn’t want this thing to go away,” he says. He posted about it on Bluesky, a fashionable new social-media website, and somehow acquired a supportive investor, Jeff Lawson, a former tech CEO. Their goal is simply to keep the business afloat and its writers paid.

Will it work? Mr Collins claims that the Onion has already beaten their target for print subscribers four-fold. The paper has readers who have known it for decades; many have missed the print version. Online, po-faced outrage stifles satire, and it is harder to maintain a distinctive brand when so many readers flit in from social media or search engines, suggests Chad Nackers, the editor in chief. Print provides a chance to do more daring, extended jokes again, and build a new fanbase.

Alternatively, as Bryce P. Tetraeder, Mr Nackers’s fictional boss, writes in the first new issue, “only with print can we ever hope to target readers too stupid or infirm to use the internet. Only through print can we tell imbeciles like yourself precisely how to think in a single, unswerving voice.” For a publication devoted to teasing newspapers, returning to paper is the ultimate troll. If the Onion succeeds, the joke will be on everyone else fleeing the format.(Sep 2nd 2024)

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