The parody newspaper redesigns and removes the pay wall on its archives, counting on advertisements and deep links from blogs to drive revenue and traffic.Soon, a whole crop of uninitiated readers will discover "America's Finest News Source" on the Web. As they scroll past obscene headlines, absurd Presidential speeches, and outrageous opinion polls with mounting confusion, they will probably miss one simple fact.
It's a joke.
That's because, two weeks ago, venerable parody newspaper the Onion launched a brave "straight man" redesign of its Web site, which reaches 1.5 million weekly readers. At the same time, the paper dropped its paid online subscription service, dramatically opening nine years of Onion archives for free.
The redesign and relaunch should be scrutinized by Web designers and publishers around the country for several reasons. Publishers should take note of the Onion's approach to generating more ad revenue. Designers should pay attention to the new design, which includes much more space for ads and walks a fine line between content and clutter.
"We try to do anything we can to please our advertisers at the expense of our readers," managing editor Peter Koechley said in the Onion's trademark deadpan tone. "We've opened up nine years of archives for the unwashed masses to read, and that presents us with exponentially more places to put ads."
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Those ads reach every publisher's dream demographic: 42 percent of the readers are aged 21 to 34, 65 percent are men, and the overall readership packs a whopping $75,000 median household income, according to the Onion.
That demographic, and the amount of new pages available for ads, sent sponsors like Guinness Beer, Comedy Central, and Nokia scrambling to buy ad space. On the new site, blinking Flash animations, full-screen pop-ups, and advertiser logos cozy up with fake news, competing for the attentions of the Onion's audience.
Those new ads are financing the free archives.
"Users on the Web are used to things being free, and especially for something like the Onion," said Web consultant Darren Chan, who edits the Web design blog for Weblogs Inc. Chan recalled the Onion's short-lived attempt to offer a "Premium Onion" subscription service that made readers pay for archived material.
"Paid subscription was a bad move from the get-go. The Wall Street Journal's and the Onion's user base is very different."
The Onion's staff said their traffic numbers had increased since the relaunch.
"Smaller publications are caught it a tight squeeze," said publishing consultant Cheryl Woodard, who co-founded several technology magazines (including PC Magazine, which is owned by the publisher of Publish.com, Ziff Davis Media).
Woodard noted that many small publications are opposed to eyesore ad solutions. "A lot of them are leery of that, because it conflicts with their credibility," she said. But if a publication has substantial archived material, she argued, opening those archives and placing ads inside can help their bottom line.
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Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the Onion's redesign is the fact that, despite the paper's parody of mainstream media standards (or because of it?), their new ad strategy may help them to succeed where other publications are struggling. The Onion is now financially solvent enough to open up all content to a new breed of Internet savvy consumers.
Khoi Vinh, who helped redesign the site with his firm Behavior, agreed, explaining that freely accessed archives will allow more readers to link to the Onion on blogs, strengthening a sense of "online culture" and creating a larger readership base for the publication.
"I've long been a supporter of the theory that archive traffic generates more revenue through ads than through subscriptions— it's too early to tell, but I suspect that the redesign of The Onion will bear this out," he said.
Next Page: The Ads work only because the design works.
The new Onion is designed to look and respond like a real news site, complete with fake radio announcers, man-on-the-street interviews, interactive maps and daily news briefs. The design depends on a clever subversion of the style and delivery of corporate news sources like the New York Times, flaunting the new advertisements that crowd the page.
"If anything, I think having the ad units there actually add to the idea that this is a legitimate publication, Vinh wrote in an e-mail interview. "In a subtle way, I'd argue that they enhance the joke."
"When [a viewer] loads an [Onion] article in their browser, there's at least a few seconds when they think, 'Is this a real newspaper? It looks like it might be,'" said Vinh.
Behavior retooled the Onion Web site during a top-secret, four-month project. Behavior also redesigned avclub.com, a section of the Onion that offers features, reviews and interviews.
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Vinh co-founded Behavior in 2001 with four other New York Web designers that lost their jobs when the tech bubble popped. The group has designed pages for HBO, CNN and the Smithsonian, and earned two finalist spots in the SXSW Interactive Festival—the geek Olympics for Web designers.
"Straight Web design is concerned with presenting content and information in the most plainspoken, easily understandable and attractive manner possible," Vinh said, outlining the team's strategy for the redesign. "Satirical information design uses those tools and methods to deliver jokes that, often, ridicule the very same principles."
The new site is bursting with these "satirical design" touches. Every bogus story features familiar news fonts for datelines, headlines, and hyperlink tags, all archived with the obsessive neatness of the New York Times—like a monkey trussed up in Rupert Murdoch's tuxedo.
Web designers around the country have scrutinized Vinh's work over the last week, posting passionate criticism, praise and advice on his popular blog and on other sites.
"I'm not much of a fan, but the site works," wrote Weblogsinc.com's Chan in the "Design Weblog."
In an e-mail interview with Publish.com, Chan praised Vinh's push towards a stripped-down color scheme that reduced the overwhelming swaths of green that dominated the Onion's old design.
The next few weeks and months will determine the success of both Behavior's design and the Onion's free archive strategy. The success of theonion.com will be watched closely as designers and publishers struggle to reach the most difficult audience of all—consumers who don't expect to pay for content.
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