“The Onion” Makes Alex Cry

One of the most delightful business moves I’ve ever seen was last week’s news of The Onion’s acquisition of the assets of Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction.

• Just to make sure you’re fully cognizant of what a great parody news source The Onion has been for the past few decades, here are some of their best headlines:
  • Study Reveals: Babies are Stupid
  • World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent
  • CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years
  • Drugs Win Drug War
  • Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day
  • Winner Didn’t Even Know It Was Pie-Eating Contest

The deal was backed by families of victims in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Jones repeatedly claimed the shooting was a hoax. It ended up costing him $1.5 billion in legal damages, and put the assets of Infowars up for auction.

Spearheaded by a self-described “Masshole” named Ben Collins, who proves his “Masshole” bona fides by being quoted in the Boston Globe as saying, “My whole family will fight you in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.”

Collins, a former sports reporter, teamed up with Jeff Lawson — the billioniare cofounder of the communications company Twilio — and others to acquire The Onion this past April from G/O Media, a PE firm that had acquired it in 2019. Collins as CEO has revived the 36-year-old paper’s print edition, as well.

• In a nice parallel, Collins is also 36 years old.

According to the Globe:

[Collins’] plan is to reboot Infowars into a ClickHole-like parody of the conspiratorial corners of the Web that it once anchored — referring to the BuzzFeed spoof it created in 2014 — with a particular focus on the dubious business of “health” supplements, which were a major revenue source for Infowars. . . . The planned acquisition of Infowars sparked glee online from journalists and other readers. Meanwhile, Jones was angry about the decision and said on social media he would challenge the sale. The outrage only adds to the jubilation.

While the value of the bid was not disclosed, Collins joked in an AP interview that he paid, “$1 trillion, which I know what you’re thinking — way too cheap . . . like, what a bargain! But we thought it was worth it. It’s just a small part of our media empire.”

This is a great way to spend money on media. The Onion is a bulwark against many of the more tendentious and corrosive elements of society. One thing that stuffed shirts and bullies hate is to be laughed at, and as one observer is quoted as saying, “The Onion buying Infowars is both good and ridiculously funny.”

As Collins said about why the Newtown families backed his bid, “They have been through so much, but they like fun and for good things to happen in the world. They put their weight behind this because they realized it’s a really good prank.”

• A judge is reviewing the sale after Jones objected to its handling, but that feels like a formality.
  • The bid made by The Onion succeeded because the families agreed to forego some of their share so that more could go to pay down Jones’ creditors, making it better for Jones than the competing bid from one of the companies advertising supplements on Infowars, which was not as beneficial to Jones.

Huzzah!