But ever since the closing of the New York office was announced in September, the editorial staff of America's funniest fake newspaper has been mounting a stiff resistance, using both the paper's pages and even some behind-the-scenes dealmaking to find a new owner that would let them stay in Manhattan. And the surviving editorial team is preparing to do without the holdouts. "Losing those guys is tough," Reiss said. "Everyone who works at The Onion brings their own unique voice. But we do have the personnel to continue doing great stuff. I would not be going if I didn't believe that."

The holdouts are less confident that the editorial magic will survive the turnover of two-thirds of the staff. "Nothing against Chicago. I think it's a great town. But we're here in the center of everything and it's still a challenge to find good people," said one of the refuseniks, who worried that without "that core group ... you don't have anyone to carry the torch."

The Onion started in 1988 as a campus humor publication at the University of Wisconsin in Madison but soon took off as a business. As it expanded distribution to other cities throughout the Midwest, it also began sprouting local ad sales offices. But for the paper's first dozen years, the editorial staff stayed put in Madison. In 2001 they moved to New York, in part to be closer to the TV and film industries that were taking an interest in their brand of comedy. "We do this one thing, and now we want to do a second thing or a third thing," then-top editor Robert Siegel told the Associated Press. "People like what we do, and we want to continue doing it, but it can drive you nuts over time. We want to do some other things to stretch our comedy muscles so they don't atrophy." He went on to write The Onion Movie, which went straight to DVD, and The Wrestler, which did not. The debut issue to be distributed in Manhattan newsboxes was the legendary post-Sept. 11 edition, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT: Attack on America."

The first hints that the future of The Onion lay off the banks of Lake Michigan came in 2007, when the business staff spread across eight offices were all consolidated to Chicago, where the editorial staff of its sister arts and entertainment publication, the A.V. Club, was already located. (Full disclosure: my brother worked on the business side of The Onion in New York at the time and took a new job, where he happily remains, rather than move to Chicago.) As the announcement of the move in Crain's put it, "The free weekly newspaper ... now calls Chicago and New York its headquarters." Reducing the number of headquarters to just one, the company says, is a way to ensure lasting financial stability. "If you consider having to pay for two facilities, two kitchens, two insurance policies and two Internet connections—putting everyone in one place ends up saving a significant amount of money," McAvoy said. Additionally, he said Illinois's tax incentive for film production will allow the company to re-invest in its business, building a new studio for the A.V. Club and Onion News Network to produce web videos. (Incidentally, the half-hour ONN show on IFC was cancelled by the cable channel yesterday, though they will continue to make videos for the web.)