My daughter is 14, and as with most teenagers, we talk a lot about the future. One of the things I repeat often to her is that she needs to stay open to possibilities in life- that believing in one rigidly prescribed life path is the best way to miss out on the opportunity for something great that wasn’t part of your original plan.
Right now, I find myself in the position to heed my own advice. Five months ago, I announced I was leaving LINK and we were searching for my replacement as CEO. Today, I’m announcing that I’m not leaving, and we’ve expanded LINK Media to include a new publication. All because I stayed open to opportunities.
This came together very quickly. We paused the LINK CEO search for a brief period in October when I was out on medical leave (everything’s fine). The first meeting I had when I came back from leave was with some folks from CityBeat, floating the idea of partnership. Later that week, I met with CityBeat’s owner, and he asked if LINK would be interested in not just partnering with, but acquiring CityBeat.
That was five weeks ago.
It was a very quick deal, but when a deal makes sense, you can move quickly. When we formed LINK Media four years ago, we structured the company so that we could eventually expand, either through launching in new markets or acquiring other publications.
Our mission, from the beginning, was to support vibrant communities through independent, sustainable local journalism. We started in NKY because we recognized the need for a larger, more robust news organization than what existed here already, and we’ve been successful in that mission, bringing vital news and information to the 400,000-plus people who live in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties.
LINK was always built to scale (that’s why I was brought in to lead it – my background in building and scaling organizations) and our back-office accounting, production and sales teams have operational capacity to add additional publications. Our systems and processes were created to grow, and those teams are excited for the opportunity to flex their muscles.
CityBeat is a great addition to the LINK Media family because they have more than 30 years of history in the region, bringing reporting about arts, culture and community to residents on both sides of the river. They’ve been through a few ownership changes over the past fifteen years, and it feels good to bring a local publication back under local ownership.
This acquisition represents a merger of back office capabilities, but not a merger of editorial missions. LINK nky will continue to cover Northern Kentucky the way it has for four years – reporting on politics, government, education, business, high school sports and the issues that matter most to our readers. CityBeat will continue to cover what makes the Cincinnati region so vibrant – arts, culture, music, food and the serious issues associated with those topics.
What excites me most about this acquisition is the stability it provides both organizations. Being a stand-alone publication in 2025 is incredibly hard. Finding economies of scale, and bringing in enough revenue to support a professional back office is nearly impossible if you only have one publication. Having more advertising to sell, more publications to design and more audience to reach makes both LINK nky and CityBeat more resilient in the face of changing market forces.
And that brings me back to my own role. I was leaving LINK Media because (at the time) we were through our growth stage. We’d grown and scaled to the point we could without additional titles or revenue, and no deals were on the horizon. The part that I’m best at was mostly finished.
Now that we’ve made this acquisition, we’re set to grow again. My skillset is needed to bring these two organizations into alignment and grow both of them. It is an exciting new challenge, and there’s nothing I love more than a challenge.
So we’ll continue to stay open to opportunities. We’ll keep growing LINK nky, we’ll stabilize and grow CityBeat, and we’ll see what else the future holds. And as always, we appreciate those of you who read, engage with and support our work.
