G/O Media, the struggling company that recently sold Deadspin, has acquired the popular humor site The Onion and continued its fire sale by dumping two other sites on Tuesday, the Post reported. Ta.
According to a memo obtained by the Post, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller told staffers at entertainment site AV Club and food-focused site Takeout that the publications He said he was shocked that it had been sold.
The AV Club was scooped by Paste Magazine, which acquired the recently shuttered G/O site Jezebel, and The Takeout was acquired by Static Media, Spanfeller said.
Spanfeller did not disclose the terms of the deal, but wrote that the proposal “included a valuation that reflected a significant premium over the original purchase price of both sites.”
The Post has reached out to G/O for comment.
Most of AV’s staff, with the exception of two, will be transferred to Paste, Spanfeller said. He added that two of The Takeout’s three staff members will be assigned to Static Media, while the third will be retained by G/O.
G/O is also said to be in talks with several suitors for The Onion, but it wasn’t immediately clear how far along they were.
The satirical site was launched in 1988 by two University of Wisconsin juniors and gained a cult following with headlines like “Holy S—!” “Humans will walk on the moon”, “Study reveals: Babies are stupid”, “Archaeological dig reveals ancient skeletal race”.
The site changed hands over the years and became part of former Gawker publisher Nick Denton’s Gizmodo empire, but in 2019 private equity firm Great Hill Partners bought it for an undisclosed amount. They bought Gizmodo and changed the name to G/O.
G/O also owns several other sites, including Quartz, Kotaku, and The Root.
“We constantly consider acquisition opportunities and all inbound interests in our portfolio,” Spanfeller wrote.
Mr. Spanfeller has been cleaning up assets at digital media companies over the past year, including selling sports site Deadspin to European startup Lineup Publishing earlier this month. Deadspin’s entire staff has been laid off.
In November, it shut down its women’s website Jezebel and laid off its staff.
The company also sold its lifestyle website Lifehacker to Ziff Davis last March and laid off staff.
“We are not short on money,” Spanfeller insisted to Axios in January.
But the CEO added that private equity firms tend to have a “use-by date” of around six to 10 years. “So we’re thinking about that,” he said.
The media industry is reeling from layoffs amid a drop in advertising revenue linked to a drop in web traffic tied to Google and Facebook search algorithm changes..
This year alone, Buzzfeed, Vice Media, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, MSNBC, Sports Illustrated and CBS News have all cut jobs.
