Twilio founder Jeff Lawson wants to grow The Onion

The Future. Now under the ownership of tech entrepreneur Jeff Lawson and former NBC reporter Ben Collins, satirical news publisher The Onion is charting a course for a larger cultural footprint. By moving away from the clickbait content forced under its previous owners in favor of curating it across media formats, The Onion may have the goods to breed a new generation of comedy talent like SNL or The Harvard Lampoon.

Funny business
The Onion is both going back to its roots and planting seeds for future success.

• It’s transitioning away from typical display ads in favor of higher-profile brand sponsorships (but expect those brands to also get roasted).
• It’s planning on potentially bringing back its print magazine, which it had stopped in 2013 (print is starting to make a comeback with publishers).
• It’ll focus on building a social media presence, including content natively made for TikTok (expect its stories about the potential TikTok ban to be hilarious).
• It’ll make new editorial products to put behind a paywall, similar to the strategy that’s working at Puck.

Lawson and Collins wanted to demonstrate that it meant serious business with its Onion acquisition right from the get-go, naming the holding company it made the deal under Global Tetrahedron… “a reference to an evil corporation that appears in The Onion’s 1999 book Our Dumb Century,” according to The Information.