Readers cry as The Onion cuts back on print publication

Following in the footsteps of other major news publications, satirical newspaper The Onion is scaling back its hard copy operations and placing more emphasis on its internet presence. This week, the final print versions of the paper will hit the streets in San Francisco and Los Angeles, two of the eight markets in which a hard copy of the paper is published. The two print editions, which had a combined circulation of 110,000 copies, simply were not able to generate the advertising revenue necessary to keep hard copy publication afloat.

This story echoes the problems faced by mainstream papers, which, over the past few months, have been suffering a slow, steady demise. This tale has, ironically, been a major topic in newspapers as print moguls have watched their fortunes evaporate and venerated publications like The Christian Science Monitor and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer have gone to internet-only editions.