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The Onion’s New Owners on Escaping “Content Farm Hell” and Relaunching Its Newspaper

The Onion’s 2024 ownership change and print relaunch were linked: new leaders wanted to restore its satirical voice, reduce reliance on intrusive ads, and build around membership and partnerships.
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The Onion’s 2024 change of ownership and return to print were parts of the same strategy: rebuild the publication around its satirical voice, give readers a less ad-saturated experience, and rely more on membership and partnerships than on advertising-driven traffic. The new owners did not propose abandoning digital publishing; they wanted to change the incentives shaping it.

Who owns The Onion now?

Chicago-based Global Tetrahedron acquired The Onion in 2024. Axios identified former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, former NBC News reporter Ben Collins, former TikTok executive Leila Brillson and former Tumblr executive Danielle Strle among the group’s leaders. Collins became CEO and Strle chief product officer. The purchase price was not disclosed in Axios’s April 25, 2024 report.

The sale followed a period under larger media groups. In an August 22, 2024 interview, The Verge recounted The Onion’s 2016 acquisition by Univision, its subsequent place in Gizmodo Media Group, and the group’s later sale and rebranding as G/O Media. Global Tetrahedron’s stated ambition was to restore The Onion’s identity and bring back its newspaper.

The Onion began as a newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1988. Its print edition had been absent since 2013 before returning in 2024.

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What did “content farm hell” mean?

“Content farm hell” is a shorthand for the digital publishing model the new leadership criticized, not a formal diagnosis. In an October 18, 2024 interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, head writer Mike Gillis described a desire to move away from advertising, Taboola and search-engine-optimization incentives toward a reader experience not overwhelmed by ads. The criticism was about the pressure those incentives could put on the work and the reading experience—not a declaration that The Onion would stop publishing online.

Collins later described the scale of the business challenge in a September 2, 2025 WIRED interview: he said intrusive ads had accounted for about 70 percent of revenue. That is Collins’s estimate in that interview, not an independently audited figure. Replacing a large advertising stream while maintaining the publication required building other sources of support.

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Why did The Onion bring back its newspaper?

The return to print was both an editorial choice and part of the proposed business model. Gillis said leadership heard strong reader interest in print and believed the format worked creatively and commercially. “Reading The Onion in print, we all agreed, was the best way to enjoy it and understand what we were doing, so we wanted to get back to that,” he told the Reuters Institute.

A newspaper lets readers encounter jokes together on a page, rather than as isolated items encountered across a digital feed. Gillis framed the publication’s identity around entertainment: “We think of ourselves as comedians or entertainers.” The print edition, in that view, was a way to present the work in a form that suited its comic voice, not just a nostalgic return to an old format.

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The 2024 plan paired print with a membership programme and partnerships. Print was offered as a benefit for paying members, rather than treated as the sole source of revenue. In the 2025 WIRED interview, Collins described print subscriptions as a more stable base for the writers’ room and said subscriptions reached every U.S. state and more than 50 countries. Those geographic figures are his statements in the interview, not independently audited circulation data.

How the proposed business approach differed

The contrast is best understood as a change in emphasis. The following describes leadership’s stated strategy, not independently verified business outcomes.

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Area Model the owners criticized Stated direction after the 2024 acquisition
Revenue Heavy reliance on advertising, including ad formats and incentives the leadership said could overwhelm the reader experience. Membership and partnerships, with print included for paying members.
Reading experience Jokes encountered across a digital environment shaped by advertising and search incentives. A collected print edition intended to present the jokes in a form leadership considered better suited to them.
Business foundation Dependence on advertising and platform traffic. A broader operation aimed at supporting the publication and its writers’ room through reader revenue and other projects.

These were strategic aims, not proof that advertising disappeared or that membership had already replaced it. Collins’s later account of advertising’s former share of revenue underlines the difficulty of the transition.

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What changed later—and what did not cause the print relaunch

By September 2025, Collins was also discussing video and other projects as part of The Onion’s wider operation. Those later plans belong to the continuing effort to build revenue beyond advertising; they should not be mistaken for the stated reason the newspaper returned in 2024.

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In April 2026, the Associated Press reported a separate proposal under which The Onion would receive a temporary license to Infowars intellectual property and operate its website and social accounts with parody content. Collins described a plan for a larger comedy network. This later initiative was not the cause of the 2024 print relaunch.

What the relaunch says about The Onion’s strategy

The ownership change linked three goals: protect the publication’s distinctive satirical voice, make the reader experience less dependent on intrusive digital advertising, and build a more varied business around membership and partnerships. Bringing back the newspaper served both the editorial idea—that the jokes work well as a collected experience—and the commercial aim of giving readers a reason to support the publication directly. Whether that mix can replace the old advertising reliance is a separate question from why the owners chose print.

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