Posted on: Saturday, August 21, 2004

Twin Cities get own Onion

By Leon Lazaroff
Chicago Tribune

NEW YORK — When Sean Mills looks at his product, sometimes he can't keep a straight face.

After a particularly long July day working on the launch of a new Twin Cities edition of his wacky weekly The Onion, president Mills glanced at the latest copy of the paper and broke into a smile. The headline read "Devious Rabbit Tricks Bush Into Signing Gun Ban."

"You have these hard days and then you have those 'ah-ha' moments that remind you that you work at The Onion and the product you sell is like nothing else out there," said Mills, 31.

"We are huge believers in satire, but kidding aside, this comes down to marketing and advertising, just like any other business."

The move into Minneapolis-St. Paul marks The Onion's first new market since its editorial staff moved from Madison, Wis., to Manhattan in mid-2001. If Mills has his way, it won't be the last.

The Onion started a Milwaukee edition in 1994 and did the same in Chicago four years later. The newspaper is also localized for Madison; Boulder, Colo.; Denver; and New York City.

By early 2006, Mills would like to expand to San Francisco; Boston; and Austin, Texas. Further ahead lie Atlanta; Washington; and Ann Arbor, Mich. That may be the free tabloid's greatest challenge in its 15-year history. Other publications with an eye for satire, such as National Lampoon, Spy and the Clinton-era spoof Slick Times, were unable to sustain their initial popularity.

"The Onion began as this small, avant-garde publication, and if they do anything to lose that feel, say getting too big or too flashy, they could lose their readership," said Melissa Pordy, an independent media consultant in New York. "They have to be very strategic."

Adds Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor and expert on magazines: "Once The Onion establishes itself as something of a chain, they are going to find that the local alternative weeklies in each of these cities are going to step up their competition for local advertising dollars."

The move into the Twin Cities had been put off for nearly two years. But a 30 percent jump in first-quarter advertising revenue over the same period in 2003 gave Mills and majority owner Michael Schafer confidence that an expansion could be financed.

This year, holding company Onion Inc. says The Onion newspaper, Web site, book publishing, radio network and merchandise sales will generate about $7 million in revenue. Starting next year, company revenues are expected to grow at a rate of 25 percent, said Schafer, chairman of the Schafer Cullen Capital Management fund, and should hit $21 million by 2009.

The lampoon distributes 320,000 copies a week. Mills said each copy is read by at least three people, producing a total "pass-along" rate of roughly 1 million.