Built for local business media
City Business Media acquires and operates independent local business publications — the trade press that covers a market's deals, hires, and civic decisions before anyone else does.
The problem
Every growing city still needs a publication that tracks how its economy actually works. Fewer of them are left standing, and the ones that are face the same set of pressures.
01
Large national chains have bought up most of the country's regional business journals, leaving fewer genuinely independent, locally-run titles behind.
02
The U.S. has lost nearly 3,000 newspapers since 2005, and most of the survivors run with a fraction of their original staff.
03
Many independent business journals are still run by their founders, who are nearing retirement without an obvious successor in place.
04
The old model of selling display ads against print circulation doesn't generate what it used to. The titles doing well have diversified.
The model
A local business publication is rarely just a publication. The ones we admire operate as a small group of connected businesses under one masthead, each reinforcing the others.
A paid readership that needs to know about a deal, a hire, or a market shift before it's common knowledge.
Display and sponsorship space sold against a small, high-value business audience rather than a large general one.
Award programs, executive conferences, and networking nights that convene the market and keep the brand visible between issues.
Directories, rankings, and lists of the market's top companies that readers buy and return to year after year.
A content and marketing studio that puts the publication's writing, design, and audience insight to work for local businesses.
Recognition for local nonprofits and corporate giving that ties the brand to the civic life of the market it covers.
How we operate
Every acquisition follows the same sequence — built to protect what already works before we try to grow it.
01
We look for family- or founder-owned business publications in growing regional markets — usually the independent alternative to a larger consolidator.
02
We build a real relationship with the owners before any offer. Most of these businesses aren't on the market, and won't sell to someone they don't trust.
03
Financing usually pairs an SBA loan with seller financing, structured so the person who built the business stays invested in a smooth handoff.
04
We bring first-party audience data, tooling, and operating discipline in — without stripping out what made the newsroom trusted in the first place.
05
We build out the full mix — subscriptions, events, data, and services — so the business is never dependent on any single revenue line.
Why now
4,490
Local newspapers left in the U.S., down from 7,325 in 2005
200+
U.S. counties with no local news source of any kind
3–6×
Typical EBITDA multiple for a well-run local business publication
Newspaper figures via Northwestern's Medill State of Local News report.
What we won't do
Cutting reporters to hit short-term numbers guts the one thing subscribers and advertisers are actually paying for.
Templating every title into the same corporate format erases the local trust that made it worth acquiring.
Awards programs and conferences are often the highest-margin, most loyal part of the business, not a nice-to-have.
Reaching out only after an owner is desperate leads to worse deals and worse outcomes for the team left behind.
Get in touch
We're in early conversations with a small number of publications. If that's you, or you know someone it should be, we'd like to talk.
Say hello