I'll shed a single tear because I have nostalgia for the print version, but this isn't really such bad news. The Onion has evolved, not died. They grew quite successfully into digital (especially with video & social media), and they're now completing that transition by cutting off what has by now become a vestigial distribution channel.
I dunno, unless The Onion has an incredibly forward-thinking managerial class, then this cutback -- as well as the previous ones (including in its own hometown in Madison, WI) -- are reluctant measures taken in the face of budget shortfalls, i.e. these are cuts to the bone, rather than trimming the fat. And while fat organizations aren't exactly ideal, I think the expectation that the Onion maintains its finest group of writers while going through this kind of restructuring is unrealistic.
But to go back to the nostalgia thing, I'll miss a world in which you could carry around a newspaper made up of completely fake news.
The latter, of course. My point was that if The Onion is at all like any organization, particularly in print media, then its cutting of the print editions is less a forward-thinking move than a "Shit, well, gotta do what we can to survive"...It's not that cutting to survive is bad, I'm just saying that it's a situation in which what actually survives the cutting still has a major fight to survive ahead of it, and will likely not equal what it was in better days.
