The Onion wins bidding for Infowars assets
CNN
Satirical news site The Onion won the auction to acquire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars.
Satirical news site The Onion won the auction to acquire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars. The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and one first responder. It also will have an exclusive advertising deal with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. CNN was first to report the humor web site had entered the bidding. The purchase acquires the company’s intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory and certain social media accounts, as well as the production equipment used to put Jones on the air. The amount of the bid was not announced. “The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” said The Onion CEO Ben Collins. “Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin.” In order to make the bid work, the families “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success,” the families said in a statement. “After surviving unimaginable loss with courage and integrity, they rejected Jones’ hollow offers for allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because doing so would have put other families in harm’s way,” said Chris Mattei, attorney for the families and partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.