American City Business Journals Acquires Streetwise Media

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- American City Business Journals, the nation's largest print and online publisher of local business news, has acquired Streetwise Media, a Boston-based digital media company that uses a community publishing platform to cover local news.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Streetwise currently operates two web sites – www.bostinno.com in Boston and www.inthecapital.com in Washington, D.C. – that focus on local news about business, innovation and technology, education, politics and lifestyles.  The sites are targeted at young professionals in their 20's and 30's.

Collectively, the Streetwise sites attracted more than 2.6 million unique visitors in the last month and had more than 9 million page views.

"In a short amount of time, Streetwise has attracted a very loyal and robust audience that is different from but complementary to what we do at our business journals in Boston, Washington and elsewhere," said Whitney Shaw, president and chief executive officer of ACBJ.

"We're looking forward to helping Streetwise grow its business significantly and feel that many of the things we experienced building American City have a direct application to their efforts."

Streetwise founders Chase Garbarino and Kevin McCarthy will remain with the company as chief executive officer and chief technology officer, respectively.  The company will continue to be based in Boston.

"We are incredibly excited to be joining the ACBJ team and are honored to have the chance to work with Whit and his team," said Garbarino.  "ACBJ is the ideal partner to help us to continue to innovate within local media online and to expand to new cities.  With the support of their experience and nationwide platform, we believe Streetwise can become the country's leading local news platform."

American City Business Journals publishes weekly business journals in 40 major cities, has more than 45 business news web sites (www.bizjournals.com) and produces more than 700 signature business-to-business events nationally every year.  It also owns the Sporting News (www.sportingnews.com), the nation's oldest sports media company; Hemmings Motor News, serving the collector car market; Inside Lacrosse and NASCAR Illustrated.

ACBJ is a unit of Advance Publications Inc., which also owns Conde Nast Magazines, Parade magazine, Fairchild Publications, the Golf Digest companies, Newhouse Newspapers and cable television interests.

SOURCE American City Business Journals