Popular humor and satire publication The Onion is reportedly being offloaded by struggling parent company G/O Media amid an ongoing fire sale of the conglomerate’s underperforming brands. According to the media conglomerate, while The Onion is still being shopped around to prospective buyers, two other websites were sold off on Tuesday, marking the latest shakeups in the online journalism industry.
As Valuetainment previously reported, G/O Media sold left-leaning sports blog Deadspin to a European media startup earlier this month, resulting in a mass layoff of the outlet’s entire editorial staff. Deadspin had recently found itself at the center of a defamation lawsuit after accusing a nine-year-old football fan of “wearing blackface” at a Kansas City Chiefs game, sparking a wave of negative publicity for both the site and its corporate management.
However, despite the recent controversy surrounding the publication, Deadspin was not alone in being sold off as G/O Media scrambles to downsize its struggling portfolio.
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First reported by The New York Post, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced on Tuesday that entertainment site The A.V. Club and food-centric site The Takeout had been sold off to other companies. The A.V. Club went to Paste Magazine, which also bought out shuttered feminist website Jezebel in November, while The Takeout went to Static Media.
Details of the sales were not included in Spanfeller’s company memo, but he indicated that the deals “included valuations that reflected a significant premium from the original purchase price of both sites,” and also clarified that neither company would see mass layoffs from the new owners.
To the surprise of G/O Media employees, Spanfeller also revealed that the company is actively courting buyers for The Onion, one of the more popular sites under G/O’s umbrella. Launched in 1988 by a pair of college juniors at the University of Wisconsin, the satire publication has changed hands multiple times in the past, most recently selling to Gizmodo, which was bought out by Great Hill partners and rebranded as G/O Media in 2019.
With The Onion up for sale once again, it becomes the latest in a growing list of online publications to experience shakeups and shutdowns in recent months. This year alone, publications like The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have all experienced staffing reductions, while Buzzfeed News, VICE Media, and The Messenger have all shut down completely.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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