ACBJ to close Upstart Business Journal

Upstart Upstart American City Business Journals is closing its Upstart Business Journal website on Tuesday.

The website has been covering entrepreneurs and business news related to start-up companies.

Upstart Business Journal was rolled out in June 2012. It replaced the former Portfolio.com, which Charlotte-based ACBJ took over after Conde Nast shut down its Portfolio business magazine.

Whit Shaw, the CEO of ACBJ, told Talking Biz News, “Upstart was a content success but not a commercial success from an audience and revenue standpoint. Content that was previously on the free-standing Upstart site will be incorporated into other business journal sites and will still be identified as Upstart Business Journal.”

J. Jennings Moss, the editor of the website, is leaving the company. Three positions were cut.

The website is the second publication shuttered by ACBJ this year. In late June, the company killed its NASCAR Illustrated magazine.

The company has 40 print business newspapers across the country as well as online business newspapers in New York and Chicago. It also operates other publications such as the Street & Smith’s Sports Business Daily and Hemmings Motor News.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.