UPDATE: City To Remove 14 Blocks Of Bike Lanes On Bedford Ave.
Leftover Metrocard Change Infuriates Some
Hamster Rides The 4 Train
Bouncer Beatdown at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club
2nd Avenue Subway Cooling System Will "Blight" UES
Horrible, unfunny rumors that The Onion is shutting down some of their regional print editions were being confirmed and denied all over the internet today. Gawker reported that a source told them the publication has "already laid off editorial and sales staff for its Los Angeles and San Francisco print editions, which will cease publication. Tomorrow's editions of The Onion are said to be the last ones for those markets."
While a FishbowlNY employee declared that a "well-placed source tells me that Onion rumor is totally false," we have now obtained a memo that CEO Steve Hannah sent out about the SF/LA offices. Bad news area men and women: it confirms the SF and LA shutdowns—however it also optimistically states that there are no plan to shut down other print editions (yet). Read it in full after the jump.
As most of you have heard through the very twisted grapevine by now, we have decided to shut down our print operations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Both staffs were informed in person yesterday that their last editions would be published this week. It is an unpleasant task to discontinue print in those two cities—and to lay off the good people who worked hard to make them profitable—but I believe it is the wise business decision to make.At the quarterly Board meeting in Chicago two weeks ago, we took a hard look at the company’s business operations in this very tough economic environment. Overall, we are weathering the storm, and, as you know, we have avoided taking many of the draconian measures employed by other media companies. Unfortunately, despite healthy readership in both Los Angeles and San Francisco (readership has actually risen despite our reduction in copies in recent months) the advertising in both cities has been abysmal.
This stands in stark contrast to other parts of our business—both the majority of our print markets (Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Denver, Boulder, for example) as well as our rapidly growing digital enterprises (theonion.com, avclub.com, the Onion News Network and Decider.com—which are growing nicely and in some cases dramatically. So, at the end of the day, you have to make a decision whether to pump money into parts of the company that are straining us financially (LA and SF print) or reroute that capital into the areas of the company that are growing in size and value.
We chose the latter.
We love our print publications. They are the foundation of the Onion and, in the majority of our markets, they make us money. We have no plans at this time to cease publication in any of our other markets.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Life isn't so funny now, is it jokers?
I live in SF, and I'm actually not sad to see the print version of the Onion leave. I feel badly for the employees, but really, who reads printed material for news (albeit satirical) these days?
Strange, I just picked one up a couple days ago for the first time in ages, which led me to wonder how it could possibly make business sense to still print these things.
w/e. the onion is as funny as SNL.
I predict The Onion will finally be funny sometime in 1979.
The real news is so absurd these days, it's getting beyond anyone's ability to parody or satirize anymore.
My prediction: all the print editions will be gone within a couple months.
#3 - you picked up that copy, right? It's much less likely you would just randomly click on their website.
That's why pieces are still printed.
I picked up that copy for the first time in several years, whereas I'm on their site a couple of times a week.
It's also just not that funny anymore. They desperately need fresh ideas and new writers. It has no edge. Maybe it's run it's course. I know some trustafarians who work at the Onion in NYC, perhaps their boringtizing it.