The story
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's 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 ($19,000 according to some sources). After the sale, Keck and Johnson separately became publishers of similar alternative weeklies: Keck of The Stranger in Seattle, 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 Onion's longest-serving editor-in-chief (1988–1999, 2005–2008).
In The Onion's earlier years, it was successful in a number of university locations (e.g., University of Wisconsin–Madison and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign). 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. The publication also licensed The Onion's 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's 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 Onion's website won its first Webby Award in the category of "Humor".
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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.
New York City (2001–2012)
In April 2000, a $12 million deal for Comedy Central to acquire The Onion fell through amid the dot-com crash. In frustration, Dikkers sold his shares to David Schafer, who managed investments for Strong Capital Management. Writers conditioned their acceptance of the deal on joining the owners in New York City, while writers for The A.V. Club would remain in Madison, Wisconsin. Agreeing that the move would allow The Onion to expand into a full production company of books, television, and movies, Haise and Schafer chose a former furniture warehouse in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The planned launch of the New York City print edition on September 16, 2001, was postponed due to the September 11 attacks. The rewritten issue debuted on September 27 and was widely praised for bringing humor to a recent tragedy, doubling the website's online traffic in the following weeks.
In November 2002, a humorous op-ed piece in The Onion that was satirically bylined by filmmaker Michael Bay titled "Those Chechen Rebels Stole My Idea" was removed from the site without explanation. Entertainment industry trade magazine Variety theorized, "It's not clear if Bay—a frequent object of The Onion's satire—requested the move."
In 2003, editor Robert Siegel quit his day-to-day role at The Onion to focus on writing screenplays full-time. "After the 14,000th headline I felt the itch to use a different part of my brain", he said. "You can go mad thinking in headline form." In the wake of his departure, long-time staff writer Carol Kolb took over as editor of the publication.
Unable to support The Onion's rising costs, Haise sold his ownership shares to Schafer for $1.7 million in April 2003. Schafer appointed journalist Steve Hannah as The Onion's new CEO, who quickly faced criticism for being too old to understand its satire. In 2005, The Onion moved its New York City offices from its initial Chelsea location to downtown on Broadway in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. That same year, Kolb resigned to work in television writing, leading Hannah to rehire Dikkers as editor-in-chief.
In 2006, The Onion had reached a print circulation of 549,000; it was distributed for free in several cities. The same year, it launched a YouTube channel, which was structured as a parody of modern American television news programs. In June 2006, it was also announced that Siegel had been tapped by Miramax Films to write the screenplay for a comedy titled "Homeland Insecurity" which was slated to be about a pair of Arab-Americans who are mistaken for terrorists while traveling to Texas.
In July 2006, business media began reporting that Viacom intended to acquire The Onion. After the sale price was rejected by Onion executives, the company began expanding with unpaid interns to appear larger to potential buyers.
In April 2007, The Onion launched Onion News Network, a parody of "the visual style and breathless reporting of 24-hour cable news networks like CNN." In 2008, Kolb returned as head writer of Onion News Network, while Dikkers handed off editorial control of The Onion itself to Joe Randazzo. Randazzo first became a writer for The Onion in 2006 and became the first Onion editor with no connection to its initial era in Madison.
In November 2009, The Onion released Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America's Finest News Source which was notable in not only compiling dozens of front pages from the publication's history as a news parody but also showcasing front pages from the publication's early, more casual campus humor focused era during the 1980s when the publication featured headlines such as, "Depressed? Try Liposuction on that Pesky Head."
In July 2009, The Onion satirized media consolidation by leaking false rumors that the newspaper would be sold, which was widely reported by other outlets. Fictional Publisher Emeritus T. Herman Zweibel (portrayed by Dikkers) announced that he had sold the publication to a Chinese company—Yu Wan Mei Corporation—resulting in a week-long series of China-related articles throughout The Onion's website and print editions. On July 22, 2009, editor Joe Randazzo clarified on NPR's All Things Considered that "we are, in fact, still a solvent independently owned American company."
In August 2011, The Onion's website began testing a paywall model, requiring a $2.95 monthly/$29.95 annual charge from non-U.S. visitors who wish to read more than about five stories within 30 days. "We are testing a meter internationally as readers in those markets are already used to paying directly for some (other) content, particularly in the UK where we have many readers", said the company's CTO Michael Greer.
In September 2011, The Onion announced that it would move its editorial operations to Chicago, joining its corporate headquarters. That year, Onion News Network launched on television, and it was a major source of revenue amid diminished newspaper advertising in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Chicago and Illinois offered tax breaks for Internet video production, while New York City unions had bargained high wages for Onion writers.
The move blindsided Onion writers, and they threatened to collectively resign. Writer Baratunde Thurston organized "Project Allium" (named after the Allium genus of onions) to have business incubator Betaworks acquire The Onion. Hannah responded by rejecting Betaworks' offer and convincing Dikkers to return as General Manager and Vice President of Creative Development to maintain the appearance of continuity. Around 85% of the staff resigned, including Randazzo.
Chicago (2012–present)
With the publication's core editorial staff now based in Chicago, in March 2012 Cole Bolton—a Brown University graduate of business economics, former associate economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and research associate at Harvard Business School—was named the new editor-in-chief of The Onion. "I was never in an improv group, never in a sketch group, never wrote for an Onion parody in college", said Bolton in a 2014 interview with comedy publication SplitSider. "It was just sort of a decision that I decided, two years out of college, that I didn't like where I was going in my life, and I wanted to do something that I cared about more, so I ended up just sending stuff in to The Onion."
Additionally, in March 2012 more insight into the internal issues surrounding the Chicago move—including an attempt made by the writers to find a new owner—are explored by articles in The Atlantic Wire and New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, founding editor Scott Dikkers returned to the publication in light of the Chicago move stating that he hopes to find a "younger and hungrier" pool of talent in Chicago than what was available in New York City. "The Onion is obviously always going to draw talent from wherever it is", Dikkers said. "In Madison, people used to just come in off the street [...] and we'd give them a shot. The Onion has always thrived on the youngest, greenest people."
In August 2012, it was announced that a group of former The Onion writers had teamed up with Adult Swim to create comedy content on a website called Thing X. According to the comedy website SplitSider, "The Onion writers had nothing else going on, and AdultSwim.com wanted to take advantage of that. But only because they smelled a business opportunity. Adult Swim is just looking at it from a business standpoint." In June 2013, it was announced that Thing X would be shutting down with some staff moving over to parent website adultswim.com on June 18, 2013. In February 2013 The Onion was added to Advertising Age's "Digital A-List 2013" because the publication "...has not just survived, it's thrived..." since the publication's 2012 move to consolidate operations and staff in Chicago.
In November 2013, the publication announced in Crain's Chicago Business that The Onion would move to an all-digital format by December 2013, citing a 30% year-over-year growth in page views to the publication's website. The final print edition was published on December 13, 2013.
In 2013, The Onion received an email from Michael Cohen claiming that an article published about Donald Trump was defamation. Cohen demanded that it be removed with an apology.
In June 2014, The Onion launched the spinoff website ClickHole, which satirizes and parodies so-called "clickbait" websites such as BuzzFeed and Upworthy that capitalize on viral content to drive traffic. On September 21, 2015, StarWipe launched as a satirical spinoff of The A.V. Club centered on celebrity culture. It was closed on June 17, 2016.
In November 2014, Bloomberg News reported that The Onion had hired a financial adviser for a possible sale. In June 2015, Hannah was replaced as CEO by Mike McAvoy, who he had hired a decade earlier as a financial controller. The following year, he oversaw restructuring to reduce non-media roles in response to declining demand.
Univision Communications / G/O Media ownership (2016–2024)
In January 2016, Univision Communications purchased a 40% stake in Onion, Inc. for between $85–100 million. The Onion and Gizmodo Media Group was merged into Univision's Fusion Media Group with the former undergoing a visual overhaul to match Gizmodo's branding.
In January 2017, The Onion partnered with Lionsgate Films and production company Serious Business to develop multiple film projects. "We've plotted our takeover of the film industry for some time", said Kyle Ryan, vice president of Onion Studios. "With the help of Serious Business and Lionsgate, we'll make room on our award shelf for some Oscars. To the basement you go, Pulitzers." Serious Business is a production company run by former UTA Online co-founder Jason U. Nadler, @midnight co-creator Jon Zimelis and writer/producer Alex Blagg.
In September 2017, the site's editor-in-chief Cole Bolton and executive editor Ben Berkley stepped down to join Elon Musk's Thud, which folded after Musk pulled funding the following year over fears that it would satirize his own companies. Chad Nackers was elevated from head writer to editor-in-chief and is now the only remaining member from The Onion's Madison era. The departures were partially due to disagreements about the direction the site was taking under the ownership of Univision.
In April 2018 the employees of the company unionized with The Writers Guild Of America, East. The union comprises "all of the creative staffs at Onion Inc.: The A.V. Club, The Onion, ClickHole, The Takeout, Onion Labs, and Onion Inc.'s video and art departments." and reached a contract agreement with management on December 20, 2018.
In July 2018, Univision laid off 15% of Onion staff to support a sale of Onion Inc. and Gizmodo Media Group. On April 8, 2019, private equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Onion Inc. and Gizmodo Media Group from Univision for an undisclosed amount to form G/O Media. In March 2024, G/O Media sold The A.V. Club to Paste magazine and was reported to be seeking buyers for The Onion.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Onion, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4