According to Columbia Journalism Review, The Onion has decided to both get out of the print business and double down on print at the same time.
The popular satirical newspaper and website has made the decision to franchise its print edition out to local partners. Franchisees will pay a weekly fee to license Onion content; they’ll sell their own ads, pay to print and distribute the papers, and keep the profits from the ads they sell.
In exchange for the licensing fee, franchisees and partners can choose from three bundles of content to sell print and geo-locational web ads against. But franchisees take those packages in an all-or-nothing agreement. They can’t touch the content; that’s the deal.