How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The Onion is a comedy institution — and like everything else in media, it went on a pure nightmare hell ride in the 2010s. We could do an entire episode on the G/O Media calamity, but the short version is: A bunch of friends just managed to buy The Onion, and they're busy relaunching the website, going back to print, and, clearly, having a blast doing it. CEO Ben Collins and chief product officer Danielle Strle joined me to explain how that even works in 2024.

Links:

• The Onion sold by G/O Media | The New York Times
• Sam Reich on revamping the game show - and Dropout’s success | NPR
• Platformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse | Decoder
• Craig Silverman: Digital advertising’s structure has been weaponized | Digiday
• US Warns a Gaza Ceasefire Would Only Benefit Humanity | The Onion
• The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free | Current Affairs
• A newsroom expands and The Onion is out again on paper | Washington Post
• Report: Nuclear War Sounds Fucking Amazing Right Now | The Onion
• Google defends AI search results after they told us to put glue on pizza | The Verge
• Jury awards nearly $1B to Sandy Hook families in Alex Jones defamation case | CNN
• ‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens | The Onion

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23989633

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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