The Hill is sold for $130 million to local news powerhouse Nexstar

• Nextstar Media Group announced its acquisition of The Hill for $130 million on Friday.
• The Hill has been a political news staple for nearly two decades.
• Nexstar is known for having one of the largest networks of local news outlets in the US.

Political news hub The Hill has sold to Nexstar Media Group, a local television news company, for $130 million.

The Hill, which positioned itself as a "centrist" perspective on politics, had been growing its digital audience.

"Only a few years ago The Hill was a print publication struggling to survive," James (Jimmy) Finkelstein, the Hill's owner, wrote in a message shared to the publication's Twitter on Friday.

Finkelstein bought out a controlling stake in the publication in 2014 - two decades after his father Jerry Finkelstein co-founded the publication in 1994 - according to the New York Times.

More recently, The Hill had become "highly profitable," according to Finkelstein. The publication's profits were increasing 50% year-over-year and revenue was also on the rise, he wrote.

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The Hill's business model relied primarily on advertising, with direct, programming, and licensing revenue supporting the Washington D.C. publication, Nexstar said. The Hill had nearly 48 million monthly users and over 2 billion total pageviews in 2020, per Comscore, with over 100 journalists at the time of this acquisition, according to Nexstar.

Finkelstein had been shopping around for potential buyers for a while, and held conversations with Nexstar in the spring, Axios reported in June.

Nexstar's acquisition will fold The Hill into its portfolio of 199 local news stations and 120 local websites and said it is looking at opportunities to expand The Hill's reach with potential collaborations with NewsNation, Nexstar's cable news network formerly known as WGN America.

"The accretive acquisition of The Hill's independent, political digital media platform marks continued progress with Nexstar's 'content-first strategy' and reflects our organization-wide commitment to deliver trusted, unbiased, fact-based journalism that engages and informs our audiences across all screens and devices," Tom Carter, Nextstar's president and COO said in a statement announcing the acquisition.

"It has been an honor to lead and transform The Hill into the premier news outlet that it is today," Finkelstein said in the prepared statement. "We are confident that Nexstar will continue to accelerate this tremendous growth."

Nexstar's acquisition also marks Finkelstein's departure from The Hill. Finkelstein, who had been affiliated with former President Donald J. Trump and many of his associates over the years, will be moving onto "new ventures."

This story was updated to clarify Finkelstein's father was co-founder of the publication.