That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...
I saw OP and went to infowars dot com to have a look. I scrolled a bit, clicked some links, looked at the store, had a good laugh at the comedy of this ironic site.
Now you’re telling me the site is not a joke from The Onion? Reality is stranger than fiction.
"Video: ‘Homophobic’ 6-Week-Old Baby Cries After Gay Dad Tells Him ‘There Is No Mama’"
"UK Approves Bills To Remove Criminal Penalties For Women Who Commit Their Own Abortions"
"Nigerian Photographed Killing Cat And Trying To Cook It In Front Of Children’s Playground In Italy"
I appreciate this story appears to be all about the rage-bate headlines, but I don't believe that either six-week old babies say "Mama" (with purpose) or that a baby that age would be capable of responding in the way described to an adult saying "there is no Mama". It doesn't work like that at that age.
[Source: have three kids]
Edit: but it is likely the baby is older than 6 weeks in that video - this seems to be the source of confusion (read carefully - the 6-week-old video was a different, older video):
In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay “6 week old homophobic baby,” which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads. In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound “ma ma ma,” when asked if he wants “dada or pop.” Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated." - https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/shane-mcanally-video-...
Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong is throwing out the baby with the bathwater - the main thrust of the story is true.
[Apologies for being somewhat absolutist about this, but...] babies do not (typically) understand the literal meaning of words - or indeed understand language generally - at 6 weeks. They may understand tone, but not words.
Again, rage bait headlines and all that.
> Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong
Was hoping to provide useful data for any readers who may be here to "gratify their intellectual curiosity"* that certain claims referenced in this thread are ... implausible ... and that's putting it mildly.
* this is HN ;)
Pronounced social smiling (as in the video) already by six weeks would also pretty unusual.
I don't see how that's a laughing matter.
"Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"
"Photos Of A Cucumber & Ron Paul Playing Baseball Massively Ratio Netanyahu & Mark Levin On X"
To be fair, he did.
> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation
Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.
- The UK bill is real: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3511/stages/18040/amendmen...
This new clause would disapply existing criminal law related to the accessing or provision of abortion care from women acting in relation to their own pregnancy at any gestation, ensuring no woman would be liable for a prison sentence as a result of seeking to end her own pregnancy. It would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting, including but not limited to the time limit, the grounds for abortion, or the requirement for two doctors’ approval.
- The video of the Nigerian has also been making the rounds on social media and has not been debunked as an ai generated fake. There are both images and video of the incident.
Not really sure why you would post this sarcastically when all you had to do was a ten second google search to confirm none of these are cringe worthy, tinfoil hat conspiracies.
A baby has even less understanding.
Everyone who is debating the homophobia of the baby is projecting.
That’s cringeworthy.
Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"
This is using a different structure.
> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.
I'm surprised you're surprised.
Does that mean their use of the branding and claims of ownership could be illegal or would it be covered under the first ammendment?
Somehow I don't think the confidence is meant to be taken at exactly face value.
Maybe you're not highbrow enough for this...
> Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy.
> “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview.
I love it.
In case you didn't know, the creators of Birds aren't real rug pulled and stole millions with their crypto coin.
I didn't find anything about this though.
As opposed to the current factual information?
Tim and Eric's Title Explained
By calling the show "Awesome" and "Great" before the viewer has even seen it, Tim and Eric lean into a persona of unearned confidence.
For contrast, this is what I'd call absurdism without being smug: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...
—-
Today Now!: Save Money By Taking A Vacation Entirely In Your Mind
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7qYL_KT06-U
Today Now! Host Undergoes Horrifically Painful Surgery Live On Air
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5yR--35uqA
How To Channel Your Road Rage Into Cold, Calculating Road Revenge
I love that. Like a familiar smell, it triggered in me a long lost memory of the old hacker ethos.
https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3mjwx7i...
When they ask about it, throw a bunch of breathless praise on Stallman hacking the laser printer, building an OS from scratch, predicting DRM, fighting against cellphone surveillance, etc.
Tell them you'll send them a link. Then link them to the Alex Jones interview with Richard Stallman. (It's a pretty good interview, btw.)
It's like hiding broccoli in a chocolate bar they were going to eat anyway.
"Drugs Win Drug War"
"History Sighs, Repeats Itself"
and of course...
"SICKOS"
Accidental and ironic, but still impressive.
This is hilarious.
> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
> The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.
Great work by all on this effort.
I find it crazy that in the US you can't take an opinion on something without risking being bankrupted because that thing you said is later proven untrue and that it hurt someone's feelings – feeling which in the US have a monetary value of billions apparently.
I agree that the media should be evidence based and it's bad when the media is presenting things which are clearly false, but I also think that sometimes the evidence is misleading and speculation can be useful to get to the truth.
Surely cases like this show that it's simply far too dangerous to report on something in the US which might both upset people and could later proven to be false?
We have a similar issue in the UK where even when it's widely understood that someone is abusing kids, if they're famous our media basically can't say anything because they'll risk being sued. While our law is well intentioned, it seems that it really just suppresses the free exchange of information which has repeatedly led to harms against children. The speculation while often harmful is sometimes useful.
I just feel like there's a middle ground here. Maybe you can sue, but perhaps your feelings are only worth a few hundred thousand pounds? I get the US is much richer than the UK but being sued for billions for being wrong and hurting peoples feelings just seems insane. And I agree Jones was completely wrong to have said what he said.
Why am I wrong on this? I hate holding this opinion and would like it changed.
Timeline:
1. Alex Jones hosts guests on his show questioning if a mass school shooting was a falsified event.
2. The controversy drove a massive increase in traffic to his videos.
3. This encouraged Mr. Jones to host additional guests who made direct claims that parents of the slain children were actors hired by the US government.
4. Those parents received intense harassment and death threats. Many had to move away from their homes.
5. The parents sent many requests to the Infowars show asking Mr. Jones to stop claiming they were actors; Infowars did not stop.
6. The parents sued.
7. Infowars failed to comply with standard evidence discovery requests.
8. After many attempts by the court to achieve compliance, the plaintiffs moved for a default judgement. The court accepted.
9. At the award hearing, plaintiffs provided evidence that Mr. Jones moved assets out of Infowars to a company owned by his parents specifically to evade paying the judgment.
10. The jury at the award hearing awarded the plaintiffs about $1B in damages. Rationale was to discourage Mr. Jones from continuing to libel family members impacted by mass shootings.
The award hearing was exceptionally dramatic and theatrical. The defense was repeatedly caught in lies and accidentally sent evidence to the plaintiff's lawyer, revealing Mr. Jones's perjury.
The prosecution even told them that they had completely fucked up and did they intend to send everything, and the defense said "Yes". Then when these messages were brought up in court, the defense tried to say that they couldn't be allowed because they were private correspondence between them and their client. To which the prosecution supplied their conversation with the defense showing that tried to make them aware and gave them a chance to correct their error.
It was a monumental fuck up.
Some of the points here suggest that the $1b might be punishment for Jones not complying fully with courts, which I'd also disagree with the reasonableness of. However you say:
> The jury at the award hearing awarded the plaintiffs about $1B in damages. Rationale was to discourage Mr. Jones from continuing to libel family members impacted by mass shootings.
So the court decided that Jones said something wrong which hurt peoples feelings. And stopping him further hurting their feelings was worth $1B?
I don't agree with this and I think it's absurd. I feel for the families and I think what Jones did was wrong. I am glad he was punished, but $1B makes no sense to me.
I also don't understand the relevance death threats have unless Jones was urging his following to threaten the lives of the families? If the media run a negative article about someone and that person then receives death threats as a result I personally don't believe that is the media's fault, even if it later turns out what the media reported was incorrect. We can't punish people for the actions of others.
Also, this is the kind of case where USA allows Alex Jones kind of bad actors a lot more leeway then most of world countries.
To quote Jones:
“We’ve clearly got people where it’s actors playing different parts of different people. I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”
That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.
Why so large? A few reasons. First, this was for 26 families, so a substantial number of people. Second, we’re not just talking emotional damages — we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies. Third, a big chunk of the damages were punitive. Alex Jones has a history of lying to expand his audience, recklessly ignoring the effects of those lies. A judge decided that the verdict needed to be big enough to discourage Jones from continuing to lie.
(Arguably that didn’t work.)
I think the deliberate maliciousness of it should bare more punishment, but I still think $1B is extremely unreasonable.
It's also absurd to me that a judge should have the right to make up an arbitrarily big number as a means to inflect a secondary punishment. $1 million is discouragement, $1 billion is an attempt to destroy the business and his life. While I have no sympathy for Jones, I still find this problematic if what you're saying is true.
You could say that all day and people would not like you, but no one could do anything about it.
What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.
Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".
Between this takeover, and Trump’s BRUTAL takedown of AJ a few days ago, karma seems to be catching up with that shit peddling, abusive bottom-feeder scum that is AJ.
Here is to them eating each other, and choking on it.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/knowledge-fight/id1192...
In any age where Polymarket didn't already exist, we'd have called this satire.
The only reason Alex Jones was targeted is because he helped get Trump elected.
It's also very odd that the military basically took over the town after Sandy Hook and it was bulldozed less than a year after the mass shooting:
https://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/240242673/newtown-residents-d...
Probably the most notorious lesson that when an asshole does a terrible thing and nothing can be extracted from him, you shouldn't go out of your way to do something dumb enough that everyone who already had their pitchforks out justifies you being the scapegoat instead.
This judgement ends up being more akin to punishing him by forcing him off of his platform, which is actually unconstitutional even for a shitbag like him.
Those people won a tort (in theory), because he caused them damages that he was responsible for making remedying.
By the legal definition of slander, your statement is false.
But when a corporation does something like Bhopal, you can generally count on them hyperprofessionally attending to every detail of the ensuring tort case. Unlike Jones, who at literally every step of the legal process thumbed his nose at the court, including, at one point, attempting to boycott the process outright.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Legal Eagle and the commentary on the cell phone evidence (3 years ago) https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs
It's not the court's problem that Jones won't be able to afford to broadcast his messages so broadly after this judgment. I guess he'll have to use the same tools as the rest of us now.
Sure, some company poisons the groundwater with hexavalent chromium: let's fine them $2800 quintillion. That makes sense to me. I mean, it makes sense to you, right? I know that it must make sense to you, because I actually do see evidence of stupid shit thinking like this out in the real world all around me.
When you levy fines/awards that could never hoped to be paid in any real-world circumstances, you're not levying fines (or awards) at all, you're trying to fabricate a scenario, as a judge, to stop them from existing or doing what they do. And it isn't without consequence.
Here's an example... a judge sits at a bail hearing, finds out the arrestee is a cannibal murderer that eats babies, the cops found him with a half-eaten baby still screaming in his mouth but the doctors weren't able to save it. Does he deny bail, like a reasonable human being does? No, "Bail's set at $10 million!". You're happy because that monster will stay in jail until the trial. But now every other defendant will have their bail mysteriously drift higher, until you're crying that bail is unjust (it's not) because someone shoplifts and the bail is $50,000. And you just seem profoundly incapable of seeing this causal chain. Bail, for instance, was only ever meant to secure someone's appearance at trial. By definition it needs to be a high enough amount that they'd rather lose out on the money than skip the trial, but low enough that they can scrape together the money at all. Done correctly, there are amounts that carefully (but narrowly) find that overlap. But because apparently no one gets that or can get that, everything's fucked up beyond all sanity.
Awards are like this too. By setting the award too high, these people will never even get a fraction of it (the damages they suffered will never get recompense), and rather than incentivizing Jones' future good behavior, they pushed him into even more noxious and socially maladjusted behavior and have inspired some sort of narcissist-martyr complex beyond even that which he was already making the world suffer for.
That's why I didn't bring it up. Because it's a dumb idea that totally misunderstands everything.
If there is one thing courts do not like, it is people thinking they are above the law and defy the courts. Jones was dumb enough to do so multiple times. FAFO.
As for the high monetary amount: that was dealt by a jury, not a judge - the system the US (for whatever long gone reason) still seems to prefer over career professionals. Juries are even worse to piss off, and juries have been known to bring the hammer down on parties showing egregiously bad conduct - see e.g. the McDonald's hot coffee case, which partially ended up being (for the time) pretty expensive because McDonald's claimed utter BS in court that they knew was wrong. Jones' conduct was similar: he kept blathering stuff he knew was untrue and, on top of that, his army of suckers kept terrorizing people with Jones knowing about that and doing not even lip service to rein the suckers in.
In a civil case, that power doesn't exist; opposing council cannot order your arrest or send the police in to break down your door and execute a subpoena. This presents an obvious question: if there is no way to compel cooperation in a civil trial, why would anyone play along if they were guilty? To provide an incentive to do so, civil trials have sanctions, penalties issued by the judge to the offending party, which ratchet up in accordance with the severity of the misconduct displayed in the proceedings.
Alex Jones/Free Speech Systems/Infowars repeatedly withheld and spoliated evidence, ignored subpoenas, verifiably lied under oath, committed bankruptcy fraud to delay the proceedings, and sent woefully unprepared corporate representatives to depositions in direct defiance of court orders. Their conduct was so egregious that two judges independently handed down default judgements: for refusing to cooperate at every step of the way, they lost the right to argue their case in front of a jury, so the juries would just decide how much Jones et al owed in restitution.
If the juries felt Jones et al had been wronged and there was no real merit to the case, they would have awarded the Sandy Hook families $1 judgements (look up nominal damages, there is lots of precedence for this), but in both cases, the juries felt Jones' conduct was so egregious that they gave large judgements to the Sandy Hook families.
In both trials, the judges went out of their way to go along with all the dumb arguments FSS's council was putting forth to ensure no appeal could ever succeed on the merits. All Jones had to do was give the appearance of cooperation and then he would have been allowed to argue to the jury that he was innocent, but he couldn't reign in his worst impulses, defaming the victims during the trial and chasing away every competent attorney he had, leaving him with Norm Pattis (CT trial) and Andino Reynal (TX trial), attorneys who have no qualms catering to a client in ways that might jeopardize their law licenses.
The real kicker is that defamation law is full of snakes, attorneys laser-focused on money with no morals who will happily do things like put rape victims on the stand to interrogate them on every detail and turn innocent misrecollections into wins for the rapist. That Alex couldn't even keep one of those around speaks volumes.
Alex sacrificed his right to a trial to determine his innocence. He and Free Speech Systems then declared bankruptcy because he knew paying for the consequences of his actions was impossible, and when you declare chapter 7 bankruptcy, everything is for sale, including the "news" outlet he ran.
Alex isn't being silenced (and even if he were it's not the government doing it so the constitution doesn't play a role here). He got Judge Lopez to rule his Twitter account was not an asset that can be auctioned off, and he's been working to shift his audience over there so he can continue his grift, with his merch now being peddled by The Alex Jones Store, a company owned by one of his friends (Bigly), which will likely be untouchable by the bankruptcy court, so he's not going to end up on the streets unable to spread his message.
> Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people.
I fully support greater penalties on corporations that break the law. That said, I still view Jones' judgements as well-earned and reasonable.
I think this one was high because alex jones harassed parents of murdered children to the point where they had to move out of the town their children were buried in. These people were harassed to the point of being afraid to visit the graves of their children. Sometimes examples need to be set in egregious cases.
And if he had been fined $35 million dollars, the example would have been set, they'd have been paid, and he'd have spent the next 20 years figuring out how much that award fucked him when he couldn't be insured for anything, when no one would touch him for any sort of gig worth having. He might have ended up destitute. But if you do the Dr. Evil "1 billion dollars!" thing, which he could never actually pay, the plaintiffs get nothing for all their misery, and the money he does hide in offshore accounts is there for him to loaf around on forever. Why is this so counterintuitive for everyone?
He was busy hiding millions of dollars in assets well before the judgements were handed down [0]. He fraudulently declared bankruptcy in multiple shell companies to try and delay the proceedings [1]. He made no secret of the fact that he was going to do everything in his power to avoid giving a single dime to the Sandy Hook families, regardless of the outcome. He had known for years that he was lying, his own staff had repeatedly raised objections to his behavior in writing, and if the award was $35 million, that's only a few year's profits for him to sacrifice. For reference, his personal expenses are $100k/mo [2] and his previous salary was $1.4 million/yr [3]. On Infowars' best days, they would rake in $800k in profit [4]. Sure, those $800k days weren't super often, but they are still a cartoonishly profitable business by every measure. $35m would not be a real punishment.
It should also be noted that $1.4b is the combined amount for all of the plaintiffs, not just one person. And this isn't an isolated incident; he's been defaming people his entire career, and every time he got a small judgement or was only required to apologize, he just went on to defame other people [5], and all the times he didn't get sued he never even apologized. He only cares about money, so that's how you send a message to him.
Edit: I completely forgot to mention that the Sandy Hook families did offer to settle: $85 million paid over 10 years [6]. Jones countered with $55 million [7]. If Jones and his companies could afford $5.5m/yr, that says a lot about the profitability of the operation and the inadequacy of $35m.
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/business-alex-jones-austin-texas-...
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61142905
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64644080
[3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/alex-jone...
[4]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-testifies-in-sandy...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Litigation
[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/28/alex-jones-...
[7]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-offers-to-pay-sand...
Some of his viewers used Jones' statements as justification for harassments.
Interestingly, as far as I know, nothing was pursued against the people harassing the parents. They went after the rich guy saying lies they didn't like, then depended on the fact no one besides the defense wants to side with someone who says such shockingly vicious lies about the facts surrounding dead kids.
If you were sued and your objective was to lose as badly as possible and get as harsh a judgment as possible, it would look a lot like what Jones did here.
free speech doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the damages your words cause, despite not causing them directly
This is basically a free speech issue akin to the JFK shooting theories.
Edit: Someone else posted a doc with a bunch of quotes on this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47839299
Why? You're not going to attract any of the audience. You likely could have just chose a new name and built whatever you want to do with this.
Edit: if you have the time, watch their youtube series Sex House, Helcomb County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisals and Dr. Good (approx 75 minutes each). There's no nudity, gore or cursing, just some very clever themes about the parallels between television and hell that are still relevant right now, if not more so.
It's like saying that National Lampoon is still relevant.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...
https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...
At least as long as their current customers keep breathing.
You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.
People are confused about what I said. Success and Relevance are not the same thing. National Lampoon still has a business too, but I doubt that any of you have seen a new movie of theirs since Van Wilder/Repli-Kate came out in 2002.
A million dollars a year for a domain name is quite a lot. And I know what was paid for the sales of some big (in the keyword marketing/leadgen space) domain names...Sale, not lease.
They only reintroduced print editions in 2024 after an 11 year break. Those 65,000 print subscribers are all people who decided they wanted to start paying money for The Onion in the last 2 years.
OTOH, National Lampoon hasn't put out a magazine since 1998 or a film since 2015 (and that was a retrospective on the magazine).
I guess I'd agree that, in absolute terms, The Onion might be less of a cultural force than it was in 2005 (say), but part of that has to be that culture is a lot more long-tailed: music, movies, and TV aren't dominated by a handful of works either.
Those 65,000 subscriptions are all people who subscribed since 2024 when it was relaunched.
It may be nostalgia, but it is not people who forgot that they had a subscription. It's people who signed up to pay money in the last two years.
Because you're saying very confusing things. What does National Lampoon have to do with anything?
You're right! Their own claim is that it's insane they're still around, because they find it hard to match the absurdity of the last 10 years.
- Drugs now legal if user is gainfully employed
- Top 10 Genocides of the 20th Century (Infographic)
- Cycle of Abuse Running Smoothly
Jokes aside, The Onion is basically spending a giant pile of money to burn the website down.
Most people thought they were insane. Bill Drummond wrote about how it strained his relationship with his kids. You can tell that he regrets it.
Personally I think a million bucks to lease a domain name for a year is a really terrible business decision. You might be able to argue that it's going to victims but you could almost certainly just park that money into an interest-bearing account and do better for those victims.
But it's also been obvious from the beginning (starting with Jones' own comments) that nobody really gives a shit about these families and they're just props in other peoples' theater show.
If the victims don't benefit from the money now, they can bear their own interest. Time-value, etc.
Not only would another owner likely allow Alex Jones to continue to operate, but The Onion can truly salt the earth around Alex Jones' business. If they own the InfoWars trademarks... if they own The Alex Jones Show as a trademark? They can potentially shut down Alex Jones' future works if they violate InfoWars' trademarks and intellectual property. They can sue him if he says something defamatory about the new InfoWars. One of the perks here is that The Onion is well-versed in free speech rights, intellectual property rights, and trademark law. They already have lawyers good at this stuff.
The Onion can be a truly significant thorn in Jones' side, the way most other outcomes for this could not. I'm guessing the new site won't be that funny, but thankfully I don't really care about the "art".
Do you have any funny jokes about the children who were "killed" at Sandy Hook or the crisis actors who pretended to be their parents and mourn for them that you want to share with the class?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
> 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
They've reprinted / reposted that article 39 times since 2014 (Sandy Hook was in 2012)
Gun violence is something that the editorial board of The Onion feels strongly about.
As mass shootings became more and more common as a news satire site they felt that they couldn't continue to keep their heads in the sand and needed to write something about it. They couldn't continue to not write something about the news, and yet they felt they had to write something. Jimmy Kimmel is often Ha Ha funny... and yet https://youtu.be/ruYeBXudsds https://youtu.be/sB0wWEFIr50 https://youtu.be/Z0vLiQLpsc8
When you make jokes about the news, sometimes you have to write about the not ha ha funny, but rather the tragic news instead. This is how The Onion has addressed it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
https://theonion.com/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucki...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )
It is growing and containing its messaging that has been going on for over a decade about gun violence.
From the article:
> But on the topic of gun control and gun violence, it is a political issue that Onion staffers clearly, perhaps even deeply, care about.
> Joe Garden, a former Onion writer and features editor who started working at the publication in the ’90s and left in 2012, told The Daily Beast that while most of the editorial staff tended to lean reliably liberal, their political satire was governed by being “against things that we thought were stupid.”
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
> “Any mass shooting is horrible, but when they just start happening just a few months [apart], it’s mind-boggling,” Garden continued. “And it’s terrifying that so little has been done about it.”
This is very much in continuing that messaging and mission in the way that they know how.