The early morning read over coffee for the well-heeled business types in the City of London is is now under the ownership of a retailer that will bolt the newspaper into its sales and media strategy. This could prove and unlikely and difficult marriage.
Nutrition and beauty products retailer The Hut Group (THG) has bought out the loss making free sheet City AM that distributes around 70,000 copies every day. The owners put the newspaper up for sale at the start of the month.
THG founder Matthew Moulding confirmed the takeover in a Linkedin post.
“It’s true, we’ve bought one of the UK’s larger newspapers City AM,” he said.
CityAM claims to be the best read business and finance title in the City of London – a staple read in cafes and train stations – with up to two million readers online.
Moulding wants to meld City AM in with his own digital publications Myprotein and Lookfantastic?
“THG’s existing media synergies brings around $1 million per annum of synergies returning it to profit. More importantly, THG Ingenuity immediately solves an underinvested digital offering,” he said.
Moulding added that lifestyle and sports content could be shared between the publications and THG Ingenuity could benefit from relationships built up over years by City AM.
Yet many in journalism believe that the THG and City AM deal makes for a strange marriage that may struggle to bed down.
City AM was founded in 2006 on the basis of robust reporting of business, politics and the economy. Even though it is broadly supportive of the free market, it’s trade mark is punchy headlines and eye-catching stories from its 27 journalists .
On the other side of the deal, Myprotein and Lookfantastic are largely promotional digital sites selling health and beauty care products.
If you read between the lines of Moulding’s Linkedin post, you can see signs of a misunderstanding of the rigorous journalism of City AM.
“In fact, City AM is a rare breed, having spend decades cheerleading both the UK and business alike. Years ago, newspapers worked closely with business to understand the UK market and whip up public support for UK policies . This helped drive UK competitiveness, on a global stage. Now that model has gone,” said Moulding on Linkedin.
We made several attempts to contact the journalists of City AM – few of whom probably see themselves as cheerleaders of anything – but the news desk was unattended; strange for a newsroom.
