Dear PoPville – Where did The Onion Go?

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by Prince Of Petworth April 5, 2012 at 11:00 am 10 Comments

Photo by PoPville flickr user ekelly80

Dear PoPville,

What has happened to the printed copy of The Onion? I used to get it every week either on Thursday and Friday depending on when the distributor filled the box. It’s now been seven weeks since I’ve seen a new one and other people I’ve asked haven’t seen a copy in their boxes either. Has the Post stopped printing it?

You are not imagining things The Onion ceased distribution in DC a couple weeks ago. The Onion started in DC in April 2007. You can, of course, still read online here.

bb

Unfortunately, they probably won’t take away the myriad newspaper boxes they put up all over town… Micro blight.
- gdopplerxt
  
  I won’t say I’m 100% sure but I think the ones that used to be in the vicinity of my office are already gone.
Local Media Geek

FYI, The Post stopped printing The Onion’s DC edition more than three years ago (see http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/02/02/wapo-and-the-onion-splitsville/). After the partnership ended, The Onion’s local distribution shrank dramatically: While once you could find a copy almost anywhere you could find Post-Express (i.e., roughly inside the Beltway and near public transport stations), over the last three years The Onion only seemed to be available downtown and in a handful of other District neighborhoods.
ET

I was never actually sure why they put it in print. I was introduced to online and that is how I got used to thinking about it.
- jumpingjack
  
  It started in print. There wasn’t a lot of internet in 1988.
jumpingjack

I am extremely sad about this development. They stopped in late February. A few years ago they changed distributors, and there was a 4-5 month period where distribution was extremely spotty. I actively seek out an Onion every week, and during that time I could only find one for about half of the weeks. I couldn’t believe they were able to retain any advertisers after that shenanigan. After the change, distribution has been wider and very consistent, but I’m sure that it hurt them in the long run. When they talk about “sustainability” they should look at how they treated their own advertisers.

My question is how can they distribute in places like Bloomington, IN, Fort Collins, CO, or Omaha, and not DC or Philly?
http://mediakit.theonion.com/print/
- classic_six
  
  You know that it was started in the midwest, at the U of W-Madison.
- yunkstahn
  
  They’re still distributing in Bloomington, IN, Fort Collins, CO, and Omaha, NE, because those are all big college towns. (Indiana University, Colorado State, and University of Nebraska, respectively.)
  - djdc
    
    Fort Collins also has a nice Gannett printing plant. If the other cities do too, maybe that’s what’s driving the distribution.
orderedchaos

Damn… I should have stolen one of their newspaper boxes when I had the chance!

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