--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, November 15th.
--:-- Ben Collins: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, that's what we wanted it to be. Like, we wanted people to wake up and be like, wait, I can get a push alert that's not the worst thing in the world. I can get a push alert that's like, oh my God, a nice thing happened on the planet?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yesterday, the company that owns the satirical news organization The Onion shared some news that almost seemed like a parody. The Onion was going to buy InfoWars. The Onion jokingly wrote, this is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites.
--:-- Ben Collins: InfoWars was owned by the far-right media personality Alex Jones and was up for sale as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. To a lot of people, the news came as a big, hilarious surprise.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yeah, I mean, that's what we wanted it to be. Like, we wanted people to feel that way. This is Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion. Alex Jones is, this is a guy who has spent his whole life trying to legitimize some pretty awful ideas through the veneer of the news.
--:-- Ben Collins: He's going to keep doing this. Like, that's just the way it is. But we can interrupt him, and also we can get one over on him. I think, like, when most people read this news yesterday, they looked at their phone for the first time in a while, potentially, and was like, huh, something good happened? Something funny happened? That's what we wanted to do.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And like at the end of the day, that's the reaction we want to have from people. And also, you know, we also get to build this world. Like the Onion is the very best place at going at the heart of like the absurdities of American life. And there's nothing more absurd than this.
--:-- John Feinblatt: [entering the conversation] Well I think three things were really going through our mind when we started talking to Ben and to the Onion team One was you know there was nothing we can do to heal the pain of the Sandy Hook families but our feeling was like if we could contribute one ounce of restitution or one ounce of something that brings them some sort of satisfaction, it would be completely worth it to us.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: How Infowars ended up in the hands of The Onion started with a conspiracy theory. In 2012, a gunman killed 20 children and 6 adults at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school, the Sandy Hook Massacre.
--:-- John Feinblatt: Soon after the tragedy, Alex Jones started to spread lies about it through his platform on Infowars, saying that the shooting and others like it were hoaxes, that the victims and their families were just actors, and that it was all a pretext for the government to take away guns.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: In response, families of the Sandy Hook victims sued Jones for defamation, and they won. A judge ordered Jones to pay the families $1.4 billion in damages.
--:-- Ben Collins: Following the trial, Jones filed for bankruptcy, saying he didn't have the money to pay them, which kicked off a lengthy bankruptcy court case and an auction to sell some of his assets to pay the families. One of those assets was Infowars, and that gave me an idea.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: You know, in June, we saw it was for sale, and we thought, like, man, wouldn't it be funny if the onion bought it for us. And it was just like a bit in our head. Trust me, we say, wouldn't it be funny all the time?
--:-- Ben Collins: But then I was like, but I think we can do this. Like I knew the family's lawyers. I used to be a disinformation reporter. So I knew some of the family's lawyers and I gave them a ring. I was like, what's the deal? Like what's going on here? What's exactly the process here?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And then I started to realize like, maybe we can actually do this. And I started to call around internally in the office and people in the larger Onion alumni group, which is like every great comedy writer in America.
--:-- Ben Collins: We started NDA-ing people and being like, what would we do if we got this thing? And their ideas were insane. They were incredible and like beautiful ideas.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So... It's like funny jokes. People were like, yeah, this would be hilarious if we owned it for work. Yeah, like even beyond the first initial joke, which I think everybody thinks, you know, this would be the funniest thing that ever happened.
--:-- Ben Collins: How do we sustain that, you know? Ben saw the potential to take over Infowars and transform it into something new. But he needed a partner. So he approached John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control and violence prevention advocacy group.
--:-- John Feinblatt: Well I think three things were really going through our mind when we started talking to Ben and to the Onion team One was you know there was nothing we can do to heal the pain of the Sandy Hook families but our feeling was like if we could contribute one ounce of restitution or one ounce of something that brings them some sort of satisfaction, it would be completely worth it to us.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And then the second thing, obviously, that came to our mind was just the battle against extremism and misinformation. We know that from all the polling we do that most Americans believe in gun safety. However, misinformation and hate and fear has so distorted reality that we knew we had to get into the fight of battling it.
--:-- John Feinblatt: The third thing that caught my eye was The Onion's record on the issue of gun safety. One of The Onion's most viral posts is from 2014. It's about mass shootings. And the headline is, The Onion keeps republishing this article after mass shootings. They've run it now 37 times.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And they were on board with Ben's idea. And they signed a deal to be the exclusive advertiser for the relaunch of InfoWars.
--:-- John Feinblatt: We thought that an advertising relationship could actually help us really break through. I mean, we've got at our fingertips the facts, the data, the research, the stories. But what they've got is the creativity and the ability actually to use humor to cut through misinformation.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And sometimes you need that kind of medium of humor to really set the record straight. Well, say more about, you said that there's an element of satisfaction. I think I've heard you say elsewhere that there's like an element of justice. What is satisfying about the Onion owning Infowars to you?
--:-- John Feinblatt: I think it's karmic justice, truthfully. You know, what did Alex Jones do after the Sandy Hook massacre? He called it a hoax. And for The Onion to couple itself with a gun safety organization, I think is karmic justice.
--:-- Ben Collins: Yeah, I mean, it's obvious. It's trying to put on the affect of a real news organization. He has tried to take these ideas that mass shootings are writ large false flags done by the government to take away your guns, that these victims of shootings aren't real, sometimes that they've never existed, that they're actors or whatever, which is this double whammy of grief that these people in America and really only America have to go through right now.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: They are, you know, the families of the victims of shootings first have to deal with the most horrific thing that's ever happened to them and then have to have, that have to be visited by this wave of awfulness. And he managed to, for several years, legitimize himself.
--:-- Ben Collins: And what we can do as The Onion is bring it back to where it should be, which is farce and like lunacy. And also, more importantly than anything else, we can build something on top of it.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Ben Collins used to spend his days looking at sites like Infowars. For years, he was a reporter who covered disinformation online. And then, in April, Collins, alongside a group of friends and a tech billionaire, took over The Onion.
--:-- Ben Collins: Since then, he's been trying to breathe new life into the publication, restarting its print edition and the Onion News Network, its cable news parody. Ben sees InfoWars as the next great idea.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Ben, is this just funny, or is it also a good business decision for the Onion? It's a great business decision for us. That's why we did it. Like, it has a lot of different reasons for doing it.
--:-- Ben Collins: And, you know, we took over this company seven, eight months ago now. And since then— The Onion, you took over, yeah. And what we've been able to do is bring back the newspaper, and we've been shocked by the response by it.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: We send you a physical newspaper in the mail once a month, and people love getting it. It's really nice. We've been, like, really, like, blown away by the support.
--:-- Ben Collins: How many subscribers does The Onion have? We have, I would say now, two arenas full of people. Like, we have a lot of people. To arenas. So not 4 trillion which it says in the About Us section of The Onion I don't want to contradict you but I thought it was trillion Oh yeah Well yesterday we had a big day John
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So what can you say about your plans for InfoWars, if this deal does go through as expected and once you get control of it?
--:-- John Feinblatt: Yeah, we're really excited. We have this moment where media is so balkanized and everybody has their own little cult armies. We're going to go after that. We're going to find a way in The Onion's own way to tackle this really weird and incredibly siloed media environment that we have.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Now, are you planning to turn Infowars just into like a joke, an obvious joke? Or do you want to like only tweak it enough so that like, do you want to keep its existing audience but try to change the existing audience's mind by not making it so obvious that you're just turning it into a satire?
--:-- Ben Collins: I think you'll see. They are building a universe right now where I think there's a world in which If you were in a coma yesterday and you were an InfoWars fan and you woke up in January, you'd be like, oh, it's a little bit different, but I could see it.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I think that's what it is. And look, man, we have, I do want to say, like, ever since this news came out, every great comedy mind in the country has reached out to us asking how they can help and asking if they can write synonymously for us.
--:-- Ben Collins: And there is a wide open blank canvas here that a lot of comedy writers have wanted to play in this space. But only at the quality bar that The Onion can provide. So that's what we're going to do.
--:-- John Feinblatt: Look, we're going to be the major advertiser and the premier advertiser certainly at the launch. And that could mean anything from, you know, banner ads to video to doing joint creative content to doing links.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And it is a chance to, you know, bring the issue of gun safety to a whole new, bigger, broader audience and do it with humor. And look, I mean, if there's one thing that, you know, is completely on our mind and I think everybody else's mind who sort of observes what's going on in this country, it's the role of misinformation and the fact that we have to stop just talking to ourselves.
--:-- John Feinblatt: We have to talk to broader audiences. And I think that this is a way of accomplishing both of those things for us at Everytown.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Ben and The Onion haven't said how much they paid for Infowars. One piece about the deal that we do know is that the Sandy Hook parents wanted to sell to The Onion so badly that they agreed to forego a portion of what they are owed by Alex Jones in order to support the Onion's bid.
--:-- John Feinblatt: Look, they realize that the currency of Alex Jones is fear. And fear has distorted people's perceptions of really reality in many ways. And I think that in some ways, the Alex Jones is sort of a standing for the whole gun industry.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And the gun industry makes money off of death. There's really no two ways, you know, to put it.
--:-- John Feinblatt: And I think this was an opportunity to really shine a spotlight on it and in a different way. I mean, we're living in an age of misinformation and sometimes facts don't do the trick. And sometimes you've got to use different mediums. And I think humor is one way to cast a really harsh spotlight, not just on Alex Jones, but on the whole sort of industry of fear, of misinformation and hate.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: That's so permeating the discussion of the issue of gun safety. It's what drives the industry. They make money off of tragedy. And this was an opportunity to really cast a pretty harsh spotlight and using humor and reaching audiences that we don't always reach.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Conservatives, youth, young men. There was at least one other offer to buy Infowars by a company called First United American Companies. First United is associated with Alex Jones' new online store.
--:-- John Feinblatt: The company alleges that the sale process was flawed, citing a lack of transparency. First, United didn't respond to our request for comment. On Thursday, Alex Jones took to X and made a similar claim.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: The words were exactly, this was a private secret sale, basically illegal is the word that's used, basically it's crime. I mean, bankruptcy crime, I mean, on its face. Disguised as an auction that wasn't an auction.
--:-- John Feinblatt: A bankruptcy judge said he would schedule a hearing for next week to review the sale process and the bids. The sale can't close until the court approves it.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: How do you think it solves the problem, though, you know, a satire website? Because there are Reddit threads and there a section of the Onion Wikipedia page about times when people thought that the Onion was real and that the headlines were real.
--:-- Ben Collins: I think the most important thing here is the Onion is the diametric opposite of InfoWars. InfoWars is trying as hard as possible to convince you that a fake thing is real. And we're trying as hard as possible to convince you a real thing is fake. That's basically the difference here.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And I can tell you, you know, I used to be a disinformation reporter. I was for the last decade of my life before I took this job. And there's only so many facts you can show people before that are inconvenient and might not help their life before they might slink off into news that feels better to them, news in quotes that feels better to them, but isn't actually true.
--:-- Ben Collins: You know, the 6,000 word features I used to write about, like, cults that had websites, they were beautifully constructed and really good and well edited. And, you know, who knows what impact they made. But a joke that lands that's like a joke that's 10 words long that lands, that might have more outsized impact than anything else.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So you're sort of saying that, like, rather than fight misinformation with facts, you want to fight it with humor and satire.
--:-- Ben Collins: Yeah, we want to fight fear. And, like, we want to show what's happening. And the only real way to get to them that way is to be funny. Like, you can scold them all you want. You can do the hardest-hitting feature of all time. But I'm here to tell you, like, the best way to get to people is to be like, isn't it kind of silly that you used to believe this?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And what I think humor and satire can do is sort of point out the manipulation and sort of saying, you know, you're being sort of strung along with fear and we're manipulating you into behavior that makes us richer, makes an industry richer, and makes a country more violent.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Now, I understand that you'll also gain control of this supplements business that InfoWars has made so much of its money off of. What are your plans? What supplements are you going to get and what are you going to do with them?
--:-- Ben Collins: I believe I mean I want to defer to Global Tetrahedron CEO right trader uh who said we would boil it down to one uh one omnivitamin that the CEO will be able to eat to gain immortality I think that's probably the best way of handling it we don't really have a second idea yet to be real with you like I don't know what to do with a warehouse full of supplements but uh we're gonna figure it out like we um it is a very silly thing and I obviously never anticipated having to deal with this, but look, if you know a supplement guy, give me a call.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Can you, I know that you're being, you don't want to share much about what you plan to do with the site when it relaunches in January of 2025, but can you give me like, what would be, like, what do you think the lead story will be on Infowars?
--:-- Ben Collins: Oh, I'm not, I'm not funny enough for that. But like, look, the way the world's, I mean, we're going to have a world by January 2025, So let's just, let's pray we get there. See how it goes. And then if we get there, we'll have a very pretty and very nice website to show you with some of the most unhinged sentences you'll ever read.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Great. Any final thoughts from either of you before we let you go?
--:-- Ben Collins: I think that just to underscore the bottom line here is if I've ever seen a case of poetic justice, this is it for Alex Jones.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: The supplement offer is real. If you know a guy, just give me a ring.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Okay. That's all for today. Friday, November 15th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by [unspecified]. The show is made by Ryan Knudsen with help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner Nathan Singapok and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Billy Libby Bobby Lord, Nathan Singapok Griffin Tanner, So Wiley and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact Checking by Mary Mathis and Kate Gallagher. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.
