The Onion — everyone’s favorite source for satirical news stories to IM and tweet to you seventeen times daily — has announced four new business partnerships this week with the Austin American-Statesman, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Wisconsin State Journal and The Denver Post. Under the terms of each individual deal, The Onion maintains the rights and responsibility for all creative content, while the four partnering media companies will each assume business management responsibilities.

The goal for these partnerships is the creation of new content and to eventually allow The Onion to further branch out into television and new online initiatives in addition to print.

Explains The Onion’s president and CEO, Steve Hannah:

These new business partnerships are win-win situations. We get to concentrate on doing what we do best: creating award-winning comedy and pop culture content for a young, educated, conspicuously consuming audience nationally and internationally.

Meanwhile, our partners get to add an iconic brand to their media portfolio and reach the most coveted demographic in advertising.

The company’s Onion News Network is already at work producing two TV shows: Onion Sports Network for Comedy Central and Onion News Network for the Independent Film Channel .