Who owns The Onion? Satirical paper goes viral for dig at 'sympathetic' cops and Robert Aaron Long's 'bad day'
The Internet is having a great time responding to a series of satirical articles from The Onion, which has criticized authorities’ response to the shooting and killing of eight people in Atlanta. On Tuesday, March 16 night, eight people, most of them women of Asian descent, were killed in three separate shootings at spas in Atlanta. Police arrested 21-year-old man, Robert Aaron Long of Woodstock, Georgia, who is suspected to be the lone gunman who went on the shocking rampage.
The Onion, in a flurry of posts, criticized authorities for their handling of the case, with tweets which read: 'Atlanta Police Rule Out Mass Shooting As Cause Of Death After Suspect Says He Didn’t Shoot Anyone'. and 'Sympathetic Police Know What It’s Like To Have A Bad Day And Kill 8 People'. Captain Jay Baker, a Georgia sheriff's spokesperson has been condemned for saying the Atlanta massage parlor shooter was "having a really bad day". The backlash compounded on Wednesday, March 17, evening, following reports that Baker had previously posted images on Facebook of t-shirts with racist slogan on China and coronavirus.
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Sympathetic Police Know What It’s Like To Have A Bad Day And Kill 8 People https://t.co/O6MCzgA4Ii pic.twitter.com/agbbcv3S1h
— The Onion (@TheOnion) March 17, 2021
What is The Onion?
The Onion is an American satirical digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes articles on international, national, and local news. Based in Chicago, the media house originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin, following which it went digital in 1996.
The Onion's articles cover a range of current events, both real and fictional, parodying the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, opnion pieces, and vox pop interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. The publication's humor often depends on presenting everyday events as newsworthy, surreal, or alarming, such as a 2006 report titled "Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness". Comedian Bob Odenkirk, in 1999, praised the publication as "the best comedy writing in the country".
Who owns The Onion?
The onion is owned by G/O Media Inc, a media holding company that runs the likes of Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Jezebel, The Root, The A.V. Club, The Takeout, The Onion, and The Inventory. The company was formed on April 23, 2019 when Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm, purchased the websites from Univision for $20.6 million. The websites were formerly known as Gawker Media which operated as Gizmodo Media Group.
Former Forbes executive Jim Spanfeller became the company’s CEO, whose moves angered high-level staffers at the company. The leadership was accused of leaning on editors to be nice to advertisers, asking for sites to quadruple their traffic—with no new resources, relocating to roach-filled offices and publicly remarking about ethnic stereotypes, according to The Daily Beast.
Founders
The newspaper was founded by Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson and launched on August 29, 1988, with an alarmingly alliterative headline: “Mendota Monster Mauls Madison". Keck was born in Indiana to newspaper reporter parents. As a third-year student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1988, Keck co-founded The Onion with Johnson.
Keck, who sold calendars to dorm dwellers and dropped out of college to start his own newspaper with the cash, invited his classmate to join him, but their early plans derailed when Johnson abruptly moved to Brazil. Keck bought a ticket and joined him. Six months later, both were back in Madison. While visiting Johnson's uncle, where they saw onion sandwiches being made, the duo, who were by then debating newspaper names, decided to call the publication 'The Onion'. The name could also have been mocking a campus newsletter called The Union.
The duo sold the satirical newspaper for $19,000 the following year. Keck used the proceeds to repay a loan and spent the next six months holidaying in Brazil, before returning to the United States where he settled in Seattle and founded The Stranger, an alternative weekly.
The current editor of The Onion is Chad Nackers.