Former Deadspin overlord G/O Media’s most notable media moves recently have been selling off titles. And that continued Thursday with news that they’re selling satirical site The Onion. But, rather than piecing it off to an under-the-radar gambling-linked company like the one that bought Deadspin, they sold The Onion to a group of prominent digital media journalists and executives. That includes former NBC News disinformation reporter Ben Collins, who will now serve as CEO:
Yes, the “Global Tetrahedron” name here came from The Onion’s 1999 book Our Dumb Century. And it has since been the publication’s regular reference for generic inept corporations. And that even had many wondering if the initial announcement here was a joke. But it is not, and the name here shows a rare element in this transaction; a media company sold to people who actually get it. And, as per Katie Robertson of The New York Times, their plan is largely to have The Onion’s staffers continue doing what they’re doing:
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.
In an interview, Mr. Lawson said that he had long wanted to buy The Onion and had pursued the project at various points in time before linking up with Mr. Collins, who started pondering the idea early this year.
“The world needs laughter; it needs satirical criticism more than ever,” Mr. Lawson said. “And that’s why we think this is the right time and the right way to help The Onion continue to grow, continue to flourish, and frankly I’m concerned if we hadn’t done this, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Mr. Collins said audiences had a longstanding connection to The Onion and noted that many of the website’s writers and editors had been there for years.
“Our goal is to be stewards for this thing,” he said. “We’re keeping all the writers, we’re going to work with the union, we’re going to make it so they can hopefully get paid a little bit more money, and we’re going to give them the room to grow.”
Collins should be familiar to sports fans, as he came up several times here before. In particular, while he was interning for SLAM in 2007, he wound up following The Stephen A. Smith Heckling Society of Gentlemen at the NBA Draft. But Collins was also notable for his work at The Daily Beast (2014-18) and NBC News (2018 to this year). And while his work at those outlets often focused on covering politics and political disinformation, it certainly had sports dimensions from time to time. And a tweet here of an Onion post riffing on other outlets’ increasingly-demanding paywalls certainly suggests he gets what The Onion is all about:
This move is also notable as part of G/O Media’s continued exit from the brands they once held. They (well, parent private equity firm Great Hill Partners) bought Deadspin and the rest of Gizmodo Media Group (the former Gawker sites minus Gawker, plus The Onion, The A.V. Club, The Root, and more) from Univision in early 2019, and quickly caused particular controversy with Deadspin with the August forcing out of editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell, the October firing of deputy editor Barry Petchesky, and the subsequent resignations of the whole staff.
After that, G/O Media and CEO Jim Spanfeller (who is heavily quoted in the memo on the sale of The Onion) tried to revive the Deadspin brand without any staff continuity. But that “Zombie Deadspin” took a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. Meanwhile, the former staffers who held the actual continuity brought it to their own site, Defector, which has regularly been notable and is doing well.
G/O Media eventually pulled the plug on their attempt to revivify Deadspin last month, selling it to a strange gambling–linked company. And they’ve also recently sold off The A.V. Club, Jezebel, and Lifehacker. The future of their remaining brands, including Gizmodo, Kotaku, and The Root, remains up in the air. But it’s notable to see some certainty ahead for The Onion, and under ownership that actually looks somewhat knowledgeable about who they are and what they do.
[The New York Times; image from The Onion]