Seattle-area business paper up for grabs

The Eastside Business, which covers business news in the Bellevue area east of Seattle, announced Wednesday that its board is considering whether to sell the newspaper, but did not name the interested parties.

A statement on its web site from publisher Joe Kennedy stated, “We have received unsolicited inquiries from multiple parties who have expressed an interest in a potential transaction with Eastside Business. We plan to conduct a fair, orderly and broad-based process. This process will commence immediately and we expect to conclude it as expeditiously as possible. Our Board of Advisors is committed to conducting a thorough evaluation of alternatives to enhance value for all Eastside Business stakeholders.

“While the Board conducts this process, we will continue to execute our strategy. In the last year we have made great progress by increasing the number of people we reach through the print newspaper, our wildly popular online news site and twice weekly e-newsletters.â€?

“While it has been and continues to be my pleasure to serve the great and growing business community on the Eastside, considering the recent outside interest, it may be time to start considering additional partnerships so that we can better serve the Eastside business community with a larger staff and bigger budget, eventually leading to the printing of Eastside Business on a weekly basis.”

Read more here. The paper started in 2005 as the Bellevue Business Journal. It competes to a certain degree with the Puget Sound Business Journal, owned by American City Business Journals.