I almost missed the shocking news that The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source,” has sold itself to a Chinese company, Yu Wan Mei, that also sells fish by-products. Onion publisher T. Herman Zweibel accepted a heathen bargain without the slightest twinge of regret:
After subjecting me to a good 20 minutes of infernal bowing and other assorted chinky-dinkery, he offered to pay me what I’ve been assured is an appropriately absurd parcel of riches to take this tiresome publication off my feeble hands for good.
Yu Wan Mei’s CEO, Zuo Xiabing, in an opinion piece today asked, Why Did No One Inform Us Of The Imminent Death Of The American Newspaper Industry?
It appears that in America the very business of published news is in the midst of widespread atrophy, and now carries forward as does a sickly and aging man, coughing up blood and gasping for breath and bearing the pronounced stench of inevitable failure.
Why did no one inform us of this? Great shame must now consume those who kept silent about the 87 percent decline in newspaper readership nationwide. Great shame must now consume those who did not open their lips before our dealings were done, and allowed the industrious and cherished Yu Wan Mei Group to sink itself like a granite stone.
He’s having none of that:
Truly, for the agile business mind, fortune is a viscous, greasy medium, free to flow everywhere. With that in mind, take notice: the Onion newspaper is for sale.
RELATED: CNet wants to know, What’s inside the $4,250.99 black box?
[T]he site’s online store underwent a revamp with some humorous entries. The best? A $4,250.99 mystery device with no purpose or explanation besides three glowing LEDs and what looks like a cell phone antenna. Its description simply reads “the device has been completed and is now available for sale. Code 41-Virtue-00B.”
Amusingly enough, you can get as far as adding the item to your cart and going through checkout, although you can’t actually make the purchase. However the T-shirts on the site are real. More products can be found on Yu Wan Mei’s site, which is–of course, fictional.
(Credit: The Onion)
WATCH THE VIDEO! I laughed out loud.