
The Onion quits print - danso
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20131108/NEWS06/131109836/onion-quits-print
======
lmkg
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.

~~~
danso
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_.

~~~
hayksaakian
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.

~~~
danso
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.

------
jaysonelliot
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.

~~~
colanderman
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.

~~~
fakename
Sex House is the pinnacle of entertainment.

------
b1daly
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!

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

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jamon51
The Onion was _in_ print??

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

~~~
BlackDeath3
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.

------
coloneltcb
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.

~~~
salgernon
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](http://thecomicnews.com)

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

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badave
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.

~~~
freehunter
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.

~~~
badave
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.

~~~
freehunter
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.

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
acjohnson55
Ideally in broadsheet or tabloid form, with layout that can be specified by
the content producer!

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dabent
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.

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kevando
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.

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ambirex
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.

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wiggle_bar
Wait, this isn't a fake Onion headline?

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

~~~
warmwaffles
Irony abounds.

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

------
iambateman
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...

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

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

~~~
RyJones
My favorite filler text of all time.

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fnbaptiste
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.

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

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

------
mathattack
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.

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8ig8
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/19970107125931/http://theonion.com/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000601000000*/http://TheOnion....](https://web.archive.org/web/20000601000000*/http://TheOnion.com)

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donretag
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.

------
pyrocat
I did not know they had a print version.

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alttag
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.

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drumdance
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.

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

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

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geeksunny
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!

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superpatosainz
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.

------
rfnslyr
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.

~~~
smacktoward
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.

~~~
jmadsen
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

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

~~~
mikeash
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.

~~~
jmadsen
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

