The Onion
The Onion is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is currently based in Chicago, but originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988, in Madison, Wisconsin. The Onion began publishing online in early 1996. In 2007, they began publishing satirical news audio and video online as the Onion News Network. In 2013, The Onion stopped publishing its print edition and launched Onion Labs, an advertising agency. The Onion was then acquired three times, first by Univision in 2016, which later merged The Onion and its several other publications into those of Gizmodo Media Group. This unit was sold in 2019 to Great Hill Partners, forming a new company named G/O Media. Then, in April 2024, G/O Media sold The Onion to Global Tetrahedron, a firm newly created by former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, which revived the print edition in August that year.
The Onions articles cover real and fictional current events, parodying the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, editorials, and street interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. The publication's humor often depends on presenting mundane, everyday events as newsworthy, surreal, or alarming, such as "Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness". In 1999, comedian Bob Odenkirk praised the publication as "the best comedy writing in the country".
The Onion previously ran The A.V. Club, a non-satirical entertainment and pop culture publication founded in 1993 that contains interviews and reviews of newly released media and other weekly features, and ClickHole, a satirical website founded in 2014 which parodies clickbait websites. ClickHole was acquired by Cards Against Humanity in February 2020 while The A.V. Club was acquired by Paste magazine in March 2024.
History
Madison (1988–2001)
In 1988, The Onion was founded as a weekly print newspaper for satirical news by University of Wisconsin–Madison students Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson. Keck's parents had both worked on The Hammond Times newspaper, and he had previously partnered with cartoonist James Sturm to sell monthly calendars featuring characters from Sturm's comics in The Daily Cardinal student newspaper. The idea for a newspaper of fake stories came from The Daily Cardinal annual April Fools' Day parody issue. Keck claims that Johnson's uncle suggested naming the newspaper The Onion because of their frequent consumption of onion sandwiches, early comic contributor Scott Dikkers maintains that it referred to "newspaper slang in the 1930s for a juicy, multi-layered story," and editor Cole Bolton insists that it mocked the campus bulletin The Union, alongside which early issues appeared.In 1989, Keck and Johnson sold the paper to Dikkers; Peter Haise, their advertising manager; and Jonnie Wilder, their typesetter, for $16,000. After the sale, Keck and Johnson separately became publishers of similar alternative weeklies: Keck of The Stranger in Seattle, Washington, and Johnson of the Weekly Alibi in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In late 1990, Wilder sold her shares for $15,000 to work at the board game publisher Iron Crown Enterprises. Haise left The Onion after 15 years and eventually opened a custom framing shop in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Dikkers claimed he was de facto editor by the third issue and became The Onions longest-serving editor-in-chief.
In The Onion earlier years, it was successful in a number of university locations. The publication primarily consisted of a mix of Dikkers's cartoons, Spy magazine-like satire, and short fiction. The bottom three inches were reserved as ad space for coupons that were typically purchased by local, student-centered or inexpensive establishments, such as eateries and video rental stores.
In the summer of 1993, Stephen Thompson founded and became editor of the paper's genuine entertainment section, which was dubbed The A.V. Club in 1995. In a 1994 interview with U. Magazine, Dikkers discussed Onion, Inc.'s plans to create a new sketch comedy show called The Comedy Castaways, which they were in the process of pitching to NBC, Fox, and HBO. With a pilot and the first two episodes in post-production, Dikkers said, "I think what sets us apart is we've intentionally formed a tightly knit group of funny performers. A lot of these other shows are created by 50-year-olds, written by 40-year-olds and performed by 35-year-olds".
In 1995, Dave and Jeff Haupt sold their shares of Cisco to purchase a $25,000 license to franchise The ''Onion in Denver, Colorado. The publication also licensed The Onion content for between $200 and $500 a week. According to the Haupts, the staff in the paper's Chicago office were known to smoke marijuana while watching Cubs games on television. But the Haupts and their partner, Dave Rogers, assembled a more business-focused staff. While other editions of The Onion ran pages of stories there were not enough ads to support, the Haupts cut content to avoid losses. It was a deal many at The Onion eventually regretted. There were blowups when the Haupts refused to run especially biting headlines or when they made changes to the paper's layout. "We might have been selling humor, but the business behind it was always very serious to us. The rest of The Onion was a complete disaster."
In the spring of 1996, Ben Karlin and Dikkers collaborated with Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey to create four short Onion news segments for The Dana Carvey Show. Smigel said that after being introduced to The Onion by Bob Odenkirk a year earlier, "it jumped out at me as something completely original and great, and I really wanted to use it on the show". Although four fake news segments anchored by Stephen Colbert were recorded, only one of the segments actually aired.
In response to other websites copying Onion print articles without attribution, graphic designer Jack Szwergold launched an online version of The Onion in May 1996. Amid the dot-com boom, high revenue from online advertising allowed the newspaper to professionalize with formal positions and salaries. In a 2002 interview, then-editor in chief Rob Siegel said, "If you look at the breakdown of people who read The Onion online, it's like Microsoft, Dell Computers, the Department of Justice and then, like, University of Wisconsin. So it's a combination of students and pretty impressive people. I get the feeling that the print version is read by people hanging out in bars".
The website also increased The Onion global recognition. Soon after its launch, the article "Dying Boy Gets Wish: To Pork Janet Jackson" prompted a lawsuit from the singer's legal team, which was settled by issuing a letter of apology in the following issue and providing a complimentary subscription. In March 1999, The Onions website won its first Webby Award in the category of "Humor".
In the fall of 1996, Ben Karlin, who had been a writer and editor for the publication since graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1993, moved to Los Angeles and joined other former Onion staff members to create a pilot for a news parody titled Deadline: Now for the Fox Network. The 15-minute pilot was completed in 1997, but it was never picked up for production. However, its creation led to steady writing work for Karlin and other former Onion staffers, such as writing some episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast on the Cartoon Network. In the wake of Karlin's departure, Siegel took over as editor of the publication, for which he was paid $400 per week. In January 1999, when Jon Stewart became the host of The Daily Show, he chose Karlin to be head writer of the newly restructured show.
On January 27, 1998, MTV premiered Virtual Bill, a collaboration between writers of The Onion and 3-D character studio Protozoa. The titular "Virtual Bill" character was a quasi-realistic CGI version of Bill Clinton created by studio Protozoa who introduced music videos and told jokes written by the staff of The Onion. The voice of Virtual Bill was provided by then-editor Dikkers. After the initial premiere, Virtual Bill returned to MTV on December 17, 1998, with another TV special and an interactive web special produced by Pulse that ported the 3D data into a web compatible format using Pulse's proprietary plug-in.
From March 3 to 7, 1999, Onion staff attended The Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colorado to promote their Our Dumb Century book. The newspaper was met with effusive praise from notable comedians like Conan O'Brien, Dave Foley and Dave Thomas, as well as cartoonist Peter Bagge and musician Andy Prieboy. The book released on March 23, 1999, featuring mocked-up newspaper front pages from across the 20th century, presented as if the publication had been continuously in print since before 1900. In the wake of the book's success, networks such as HBO and NBC were in talks to bring The Onion to TV with a special based on Our Dumb Century. Despite nearly two years of work spent on conceiving and producing Our Dumb Century, the writers received only $1,300 in bonuses, despite the fact that the two-book publishing deal netted The Onion $450,000.
In April 2000, DreamWorks Studios optioned two stories from the satirical newspaper, "Canadian Girlfriend Unsubstantiated"—which was to be written by former Onion editor and writer Rich Dahm—and "Tenth Circle Added to Rapidly Growing Hell" with an eye toward producing the latter as a family comedy. "The story is so dark and hate filled—I was shocked", said head writer Todd Hanson. "It's like an Onion joke. I mean, what are they going to do? Add a sickly-but-adorable moppet?" added editor Robert Siegel. DreamWorks planned for the finished "Tenth Circle Added to Rapidly Growing Hell" to involve animation as well as musical singalongs. The following year, Miramax signed a first-look deal with The Onion, but it never agreed to any films.
In June 2000, writers and editors of The Onion participated in a Comedy Central panel discussion moderated by Jeff Greenfield titled "The State of The Onion" during the "Toyota Comedy Festival 2000". The following month, editor Robert Siegel was named one of People'' magazine's most eligible bachelors.