I’ll always keep a warm spot in my heart for _The Onion_. But I’m not going to be a regular reader any more.
I fondly remember thumbing through a copy of the print version on the streets of Madison, and then seeing the online version get popular. In their archives are some truly towering works of satire, and even these days, “they can still be pretty sharp”:http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4033&n=2. What’s driving me away isn’t the content — it’s the ads. Their front page is now a sea of advertisements, and much of what used to be up front you must now click to read, leading to — you guessed it — more ads. It’s not like there’s an ad section, either — on the front page, they’re interspersed with the actual content so as to make it easy to confuse with that content. And they’re _annoying_ ads to boot. Trying to fish out the actual writing has become bothersome.
I’m sure the ads are necessary to support their current business model, which involves lots of employees and a New York office. And I’m not one to always gripe when some institution or another hits the big time. But in this case it’s true: it was better when they were just a bunch of dudes in Madison.