The Stranger in Seattle Gets a New Owner, With Plans for Expansion
For decades, many American cities had at least one thriving alternative-weekly newspaper chronicling the local art and music scene and reporting on the community.
Many of those publications withered in recent years, but two of the country’s best known alt-weeklies, The Stranger in Seattle and The Portland Mercury, now have plans for expansion.
Noisy Creek, a new company put together by Brady Walkinshaw, a former chief executive of the nonprofit climate news website Grist and a former Democratic legislator in Washington State, said on Tuesday that it had purchased The Stranger and The Portland Mercury, as well as the events site EverOut and the ticketing business Bold Type Tickets, from Index Newspapers.
Mr. Walkinshaw declined to disclose the financial details of the purchase, but he said that he was the majority shareholder. Index will keep a 20 percent stake in the company. A group of about 20 individual investors helped finance the deal, Mr. Walkinshaw said.
Mr. Walkinshaw said he planned to hire more people and grow the editorial budgets at the publications. He also said that all of the current employees had been offered jobs at the new company. Hannah Murphy Winter, a former Rolling Stone editor, will become the editor in chief of The Stranger.
“Alternative weeklies at their best can really, in an edgy, provocative way, be the gateway to what people do culturally in a community, whether it’s music, art, performance,” Mr. Walkinshaw said.
He added that the publications also held political sway.
“They play a very powerful role in defining the politics of the American left in cities,” he said, citing The Stranger’s push to legalize same-sex marriage, cannabis and a $15 minimum wage in Seattle and Washington.
The Stranger was started in Seattle in 1991 by Tim Keck, who also co-founded the satirical website The Onion, and the cartoonist James Sturm.
The publication is perhaps best known for “Savage Love,” the sex advice column by Dan Savage that has published for more than 30 years. The Stranger won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2012 and was a finalist for criticism in 2014. The Portland Mercury was started in Oregon in 2000 as its sister publication.
Mr. Walkinshaw said that advertising remained an important part of the revenue mix for the publications, which are free online and in print. The ticketing platform, which is used by many local performers, has also proved to be an important part of the business, he added.
He said that Noisy Creek’s budget would be $5 million to $10 million in its first year, and that he planned to add a nonprofit fund to allow for philanthropic investment in the company.
Index will remain the owner of its Hump! film festival and Mr. Savage’s podcast, “Savage Lovecast.” Mr. Keck will be a board member of Noisy Creek.
Mr. Keck said that they had not been looking to sell the alt-weeklies but were impressed with Mr. Walkinshaw.
“Of all the people we’ve ever talked to about publishing, he’s the person that really understands what makes the papers so good,” Mr. Keck said.
Mr. Keck said the two newspapers had struggled during the pandemic, laying off staff members and halting print issues, but they had since rebounded and were growing.
“Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think these alt-weeklies are going to rebound across the country,” Mr. Keck said. “I think the time is right for that.”
