Digital media company Axios has bought the Charlotte Agenda.
The acquisition is part of Axios‘ recently announced plan to expand into local markets, the Business Journals reported, referencing a story from The New York Times.
The deal is for about $5 million, the Times reports. The online-only Agenda will be called Axios Charlotte, reports on the deal say. Publisher Ted Williams and former Creative Director Katie Levans, who moved on from the publication last year, founded the Agenda, the Journals say. This includes a 14-person staff, which, according to the Agenda website, produces daily online stories, a daily newsletter, and an annual city guide
Axios’ expansion to local news includes four other cities — Tampa, Denver, Minneapolis and Des Moines — using Williams’ approach in Charlotte as a model, the Journals say.
“If this works in these five cities, particularly if we can replicate the business success of Charlotte, we will move fast to scale it to as many cities as humanly possible,” Axios cofounder Jim VandeHei told the Times.
Axios, writes the Agenda, “is a national media company focused on making readers smarter, faster, while covering topics that matter: politics, tech, business, media.”
“In 2017,” the Times says, the Agenda “generated $1.3 million in revenue and pretax profit of more than $400,000, according to two people with knowledge of its finances who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.”