Yahoo Finance The Onion Sold to Tech Exec Jeff Lawson
Satirical news site The Onion has a new owner.
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced on Thursday that the company had sold the publication to a Chicago-based company called Global Tetrahedron, which is comprised of “four digital media veterans with a profound love for The Onion and comedy based content.” The firm is run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins and owned by tech executive Jeff Lawson, who spoke to The New York Times about the buy.
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(The name of the company, social media users pointed out on Thursday, is the same as a fictional firm that appears in The Onion’s first book, 1999’s Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America’s Finest News Source.)
According to Spanfeller, the new company will preserve the publication’s current staff and keep the site based in Chicago. “The Onion for over 35 years has been an indispensable part of our country’s cultural fabric with its unique brand of satire and comedy that continues to be just as important and relevant today than at any time during its storied history,” Spanfeller wrote. “I would like to personally thank The Onion team for their hard work and dedication during their time at G/O Media.”
G/O Media continues to preside over a number of other digital media sites, including Gizmodo, Kotaku, The Root, Jalopnik, The Inventory and Quartz. (The company also announced on Thursday that Quartz had achieved its highest web traffic since G/O Media purchased the business publication in May 2022.) But the size of its holdings has been significantly reduced in the last couple of years. In March, G/O Media offloaded The A.V. Club and The Takeout to Paste Magazine and Static Media, respectively. Weeks earlier, G/O Media sold Deadspin to European company Lineup Publishing in deal that did not preserve jobs. In 2023, the company sold Jezebel and Lifehacker.
The sale of The Onion follows an Adweek report in January that G/O Media was exploring potential buyers for many remaining individual titles, and a New York Post story in March that stated The Onion specifically was being shopped.
In January, unionized staffers at The Onion and Onion Labs as well as then-sister publications The A.V. Club, Deadspin and The Takeout negotiated a new labor contract after a difficult negotiations period that saw workers threaten a strike. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to The Onion Union for comment on Thursday’s news.
April 25, 4:25 pm PST Updated with more details about the ownership group that bought The Onion.
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