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Media|The Onion Is Sold by G/O Media
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THE ONION IS SOLD BY G/O MEDIA
The satirical news website was bought by a new firm in Chicago that took
inspiration for its name, Global Tetrahedron, from a book written by The Onion’s
staff.
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The Onion’s new owners have promised to keep the staff on board and in the
publication’s home base of Chicago.Credit...David Kasnic for The New York Times
By Katie Robertson
Published April 25, 2024Updated April 26, 2024, 10:51 a.m. ET
G/O Media announced on Thursday that it had sold The Onion, a satirical news
site, to a group of digital media veterans.
The Onion, which started in 1988 in Wisconsin as a weekly satirical newspaper
and later became a website, is known for its parodies of current events. For the
last decade, it has republished the same headline after nearly every mass
shooting: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly
Happens.”
In an email to G/O Media staff that was obtained by The New York Times, Jim
Spanfeller, the chief executive, said the company was “undergoing an extensive
review of our portfolio with the intention of coring down to our leading sites
in terms of audience and revenues.” He said G/O Media had agreed to sell to “a
new Chicago-based firm called Global Tetrahedron.”
“This company is made up of four digital media veterans with a profound love for
The Onion and comedy-based content,” Mr. Spanfeller wrote. “The site’s new
owners have agreed to keep The Onion’s entire staff intact and in Chicago,
something we insisted be part of the deal.”
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The name Global Tetrahedron is, in true Onion fashion, a winking reference to a
sinister fictional company featured in the book “Our Dumb Century,” which was
written by The Onion’s staff and published in 1999.
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push has generated internal turmoil. Can America’s public radio network turn
things around?
* Apple: FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is close to an agreement with
Apple that would give the tech company worldwide television rights for a
major new World Cup-style tournament.
* Warner Bros. Discovery: David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros.
Discovery, received $49.7 million in compensation last year, a 26 percent
increase from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed with
the Securities and Exchange Commission.
* The Daily Beast: The billionaire Barry Diller is bringing in the former
Disney executive Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles, the former Hearst content
chief, to turn around the digital tabloid.
The real-life Global Tetrahedron is owned by Jeff Lawson, a co-founder and
former chief executive of the technology communications company Twilio. The
chief executive is Ben Collins, who was a senior reporter at NBC News until
recently. Leila Brillson, a former TikTok executive, and Danielle Strle,
previously at Tumblr, round out the executive team.
Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The
Times. Email: katie.robertson@nytimes.com More about Katie Robertson
A version of this article appears in print on April 26, 2024, Section B, Page 2
of the New York edition with the headline: G/O Media Sells Onion To Digital
Media Group. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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