Peeling away the layers of The Onion

For quite some time I'd heard on TV or read on the 'net about how newspapers were going through particularly tough economic times, but still each day I'd walk past dispensaries with the day's L.A. Times, and each week I'd see the free weeklies like the L.A. Weekly, L.A. City Beat, and the one that I looked forward to, the L.A. print edition of The Onion. The print media's demise was foretold, but it didn't appear to be hitting those papers. What could put these out of business?
Back when The Onion launched its print edition here in Los Angeles back in 2006 I wrote a post about how paper was the latest thing for the web, given that their website was how most people outside Wisconsin accessed them. (Yes, they did have books in print, but that's not the same as a weekly paper. And granted, what was in the weekly print edition were stories that also appeared on the site, but they were in the same week rather than much later.)

The thing about the website: I couldn't fold it up and put it in my back pocket when I headed out for lunch. (Yes, the availability of the mobile web does allow for accessing sites on devices that fit in one's pocket, but that's hardly the same experience.) Thus, I rarely actually visited the website; I'd wait for the print edition to appear in the bin each Thursday.

Not only would I read each issue cover to cover (including even the small bits), I'd keep a copy in the corner of my cubicle at work. At first it was so I could refer to a story if I was telling someone else about it, but then it became a simple matter of keeping the collection intact.

With the May 7 edition, the height of the pile on my desk was just starting to peek over the height of the wall of the cubicle. The next one would be completely above the top of the wall. What would I do?

Then on the morning of May 14 I passed the Onion dispenser, only to find it empty. I didn't think much of it at the time; the delivery had been late on occasion before, or once in a while a given dispenser didn't get filled. At lunch that day I walked a couple blocks over to where I knew another one was, but it too was bare.

On Friday the 15th it was still empty, which made me suspicious. Then that evening as I walked down the street toward the train station something was amiss.

The entire dispenser had been removed from its spot on the sidewalk.
Sure, these stories would have you believe it was merely a financial decision by The Onion's management because ad sales were down for the L.A. edition (and San Fransisco as well), but then it occurred to me. The last edition coincided exactly with how long it took for one copy of each, stacked one on top of another, to reach the height from the desktop to the top of the wall of my cubicle. They'd stopped because somehow they knew I was out of room.

If only I'd realized that was it, I could have unfolded them so they were only half as tall, and they could have published it twice as long. Or heck, I would have cleared space and started a second pile. Ah, but it was too late.

As with most times I have influence, I discovered it only after I've wasted it.

But the recently discontinued City Beat wasn't me.

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The photo site has been updated with an artsier shot of these newspapers.

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Click here to see all my posts that reference The Onion. This isn't the first time.