Toronto Star to publish Toronto edition of U.S. satirical pub The Onion

The Toronto Star has cut a deal to publish a Toronto edition of The Onion, the U.S. satirical weekly, starting this fall. The deal includes a non-satirical entertainment section offshoot the A.V. Club. It does not involve The Onion's online business in Canada.

The Onion has been shopping around the franchises of its paper for some time, looking for partners who wanted to take on responsibility for ad sales, distribution and administration of the free, city-specific street papers while leaving creation of editorial strictly in hands of Onion's management. This apparently suits the Toronto Star fine and it is therefore the first time that a print edition of The Onion has been distributed outside of the U.S. 

The Toronto edition would include some local content, though it does not typically accept freelance contributions.

The Onion now had 14 print editions, including New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver/Boulder, Philadelphia and Madison, Wisconsin (where it was launched in 1988). The paper has been launched and folded for lack of advertising support in at least two other markets, including  Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the past couple of years it has struck very similar partnerships with mainstream papers: The Denver Post, Austin American-Statesman, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Wisconsin State Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"The Toronto Star is pleased to enter into this agreement with The Onion," said John Cruickshank, publisher of the Star and president of Star Media Group, in a release. "It is an agreement that benefits both companies and provides the Star's business-related teams with another publication to offer to audiences in the Greater Toronto Area."

"Toronto has long been one of the Top-10 cities for The Onion's online audience," said Steve Hannah, president and CEO of Onion, Inc. "I think it's the perfect place for The Onion and A.V. Club to make their first foray outside the United States. Toronto has a tradition of great comedy as well as being a really smart, cosmopolitan city that has a natural audience for our pop culture coverage as well."

Recently The Star bought the startup digital beauty and wellness magazine The Kit, relaunched its street paper Eye Weekly as The Grid  and redesigned and relaunched Toronto.com.

Torstar's Eye Weekly to be given a whole new look (and a whole new name?)

Big changes are afoot at Toronto's Eye Weekly (published by Torstar), including a complete redesign of the print magazine and the website, perhaps topped by a new name. 

According to a story in Marketing magazine [no longer available online], the dramatic overhaul will be trumpeted by a multi-media advertising campaign devised by the hip agency Rethink Toronto.

The publisher and editor-in-chief of Eye, Laas Turnbull, who has already put 10,000 volts through the newsprint weekly and given it a real citymag vibe, with hard-hitting journalism and bracing cover treatments, says the paper is going to shift away from the heavy emphasis on arts and entertainment. (This would provide a differentiation for Eye from its older, heftier rival NOW magazine.)

"We want to be a city magazine for 20- and 30-somethings in Toronto," [says Turnbull]. "Everything is kind of up for review right now. We’re looking at every part of the business and every part of the brand–what needs to go, what needs to stay and what needs to change....”

Rethink Toronto's Pema Hagen says that the print, television and online creative will draw people to a new Eye experience:

“The changes are going to be drastic and I think the paper that is going to be launched at the end of the day is going to be something that Torontonians are going to love, and something that’s going to be very different from what’s currently out there."