{"id":388,"date":"2025-03-21T05:35:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T05:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/umich-hosts-onion-ceo-for-talk-on-business-journalism-and-ethics\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T05:35:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T05:35:05","slug":"umich-hosts-onion-ceo-for-talk-on-business-journalism-and-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/umich-hosts-onion-ceo-for-talk-on-business-journalism-and-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"UMich hosts Onion CEO for talk on business, journalism and ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>About 150 people gathered in<a href=\"https:\/\/michiganross.umich.edu\/about\/visit\/graduate-tour\"> Robertson Auditorium<\/a> Thursday afternoon for the Ross School of Business\u2019 fourth annual<a href=\"https:\/\/michiganross.umich.edu\/events\/Mitchell-Lecture-Series\"> John H. Mitchell Lecture Series<\/a>, welcoming Ben Collins, CEO of <a href=\"https:\/\/theonion.com\/\">The Onion<\/a> and business leader, with work experience at organizations ranging from Hulu and Esquire to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/\">The Daily Beast<\/a> and NBC.<\/p>\n<p>The lecture series, free and open to the public, features lecturers ranging from filmmakers to entrepreneurs in creative fields with a focus on ethics. In 2022, the inaugural lecture hosted filmmaker<a href=\"https:\/\/diversityforum.wisc.edu\/speaker\/cox-fanshen\/\"> Fanshen Cox<\/a>, then<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c1jpg0069wgo\"> Theranos<\/a> whistleblower<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tyler-shultz.com\/\"> Tyler Shultz<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rummanchowdhury.com\/\"> Dr. Rumman Chowdhury<\/a> in the following years. <a href=\"https:\/\/michiganross.umich.edu\/about\/sharon-matusik\">Sharon Matusik<\/a>, Business School dean and professor, moderated the lecture, which focused specifically on ethics in journalism this year.<\/p>\n<p>Collins recounted his experience in the journalism industry, citing a revealing experience from his time at The Daily Beast, where he learned some people put profit over responsible reporting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was all people who were early to the game of disinformation,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThey realized you could make money in this to build a following and these people wound up being what I now like to call the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>As a satirical media company, Collins said The Onion offers vastly unique but important journalistic content. The company originated as a weekly print publication in Madison, Wisconsin, but is now based in Chicago. Collins said he values the unrelenting nature of Onion writers, which motivated his mission to prevent Elon Musk\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/elon-musk-says-he-wants-to-buy-the-onion-2019-9\"> attempt<\/a> to buy it in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey don\u2019t let anybody tell them what to say,\u201d Collins said. \u201cI\u2019m so impressed by that, and I saw that they were very for sale. And I also knew that Elon Musk had tried to buy The Onion before \u2026 So I knew that if it was for sale, he\u2019d probably kind of be interested in it. So then I tried as hard as I could to rescue this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Collin cited a<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/17\/science\/chatgpt-digital-therapists-anxiety.html\"> recent<\/a> New York Times article about AI chatbots experiencing anxiety, and said he sees a disconnect between what is important to readers and what news outlets are covering, which creates distrust in the media.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, the gap between what\u2019s being reported as the news and what\u2019s being reported as a shared reality, it\u2019s pretty wide and far off from what actually is,\u201d Collins said. \u201cI just think that you are in a moment right now where a lot of the people that you\u2019re supposed to be trusting are scared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Collins also said it is important for newspapers to provide multiple channels for audiences to interact with their content, especially in an evolving digital age. The Onion re-established its <a href=\"https:\/\/theonion.com\/onion-news-network\/\">Onion News Network<\/a>, an offshoot of the satire company in TV form.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cWe try to live in a place where we do reach everybody where they are,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we brought back the Onion News Network. That in itself is driving a lot of young people who don\u2019t know who we are back into their world. So it can\u2019t just be the paper, but I do love it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although journalistic ethics was a large part of the lecture, Business graduate student James Reed said he hoped for more discussion on how The Onion ties humor into their business model.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d want to hear about how they embrace humor, because a lot of companies don\u2019t want to be funny or easygoing,\u201d Reed said. \u201cSo I\u2019m curious how they internally embrace humor at the company. News is usually scary, and not happy, and serious because of all the bad things happening so I guess it\u2019s hard to be loose and fun with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Information senior Julia Coffman said she appreciated the lecture\u2019s blend of humor and seriousness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought that it was so light hearted and had comedic undertones,\u201d Coffman said. \u201cAnd there were laughs, but it was also very real and kind of dove into some of the critical things that people should be paying attention to as the media kind of becomes more and more controlled by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Coffman also emphasized the importance of having a lecture series focused on ethics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that a lot of people would give up their ethics for a job because they think that would be the right answer,\u201d Coffman said. \u201cAnd especially in the current job market I think a lot of us are scared of not having jobs, or things changing rapidly and jobs being at risk. So I think that\u2019s huge, and having the encouragement to stand up for what you believe in, regardless of what your boss may do or may think is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Kayla Lugo can be reached at klugo@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 150 people gathered in Robertson Auditorium Thursday afternoon for the Ross School of Business\u2019 fourth annual John H. Mitchell Lecture Series, welcoming Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion and business leader, with work experience at organizations ranging from Hulu and Esquire to The Daily Beast and NBC. The lecture series, free and open to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[245,343,346,325,345,342,344,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ceo","10":"tag-ethics","11":"tag-hosts","12":"tag-journalism","13":"tag-onion","14":"tag-talk","15":"tag-umich"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}