Categories: OLD Media Moves

Behind New Media’s $18M deal for business publications such as NJBiz

Jon Harris of The Allentown Morning Call in Pennsylvania writes about New Media Investment Group’s purchase of the parent company of the Lehigh Valley Business Journal and NJBiz.

Harris writes, “What we learned, following a first-quarter earnings call Thursday, is that buyer New Media Investment Group Inc. is ponying up $18 million in cash to acquire the company, which it plans to use to grow its business-to-business media company and support its digital marketing services platform.

“New Media, which owns GateHouse Media, said the deal for Harrisburg-based Journal Multimedia is expected to close in the second quarter. In addition to Lehigh Valley Business, Journal Multimedia, a multi-title publishing, events, media and research company, runs the Central Penn Business Journal, Central Penn Parent and Best Companies Group out of Harrisburg, FGV Media out of Mechanicsburg, and NJBIZ and Pet Age out of Somerset, N.J.

“On the call, New Media President and CEO Michael Reed seemed most enthused about Journal Multimedia’s Best Companies Group, a research division he called ‘very exciting’ because it creates Best Places to Work publications and events.”

Read more here.

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.