G/O Media, the New York-based media company whose titles include Gizmodo, Deadspin and Gawker, on Thursday announced the acquisition of struggling 10-year-old business news site Quartz. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Zach Seward, a Quartz co-founder and the current CEO, will join G/O Media as general manager and editor in chief of Quartz after the deal becomes official. Katherine Bell, Quartz’s editor in chief since January 2020, will continue as an adviser to Quartz.
In a memo to Quartz’s roughly 50 newsroom staffers, Seward said there were no layoffs expected in the wake of the sale — and that “all current employees of Quartz who do come along will be eligible for deal bonuses from the proceeds of the sale, totaling more than $1 million.”
Quartz, which was founded in 2012 to target business executives aged 25-45, has struggled in recent years with shifts in the digital media space.
Under the G/O Media banner, it will join a roster of titles that includes the tech site Gizmodo, the entertainment site The A.V. Club, the sports news outlet Deadspin, the women-centric Jezebel, the car culture site Jalopnik, the gaming-oriented gaming Kotaku), the satirical The Onion and Black news and culture site TheRoot.
“Acquiring Quartz adds to our already unparalleled portfolio of sites that are beloved by readers and embraced by advertisers,” G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said in a statement. “The digital business news space is an area ripe for investment and synergies with our other G/O Media sites. Quartz’s commitment to quality and mission-driven journalism embodies the values espoused in all of our brands, and I look forward to working with the talented Quartz team to grow the business to new levels of success.”
The acquisition has come amid a consolidation wave in the digital media space with recent mergers of Vox Media and Group Nine Media; BuzzFeed with Complex Networks (and, before that, HuffPost); and Vice Media with Refinery29.