1989 – Ray Shaw purchases American City Business Journals and makes the weekly business newspaper standard reading in major metropolitan markets.
In the 1980s, the owners of weekly newspapers discovered an untapped area for business journalism – providing coverage of small, privately held businesses in a community. While the traditional newspapers focused their coverage on the large, publicly traded entities in the city, they virtually ignored the smaller companies. The weekly business newspapers found that there were plenty of good stories to be told about these companies as well.
In the early 1980s, the weekly business newspapers were owned by one of several companies. Newspaper chain Scripps-Howard owned business tabloids in 13 markets, while American City Business Journals operated publications in five cities. The Business Journal Group ran six weekly newspapers, while Crain Communications and MCP each had three.
By 1984, the fight for readers among these publications had reached the country’s biggest media market – New York. In that year, monthly Manhattan inc. and weekly Crain’s New York Business both debuted, joining bi-weekly New York CityBusiness. Crain had already successfully launched a weekly in Chicago. By 1985, the fight for business readers among these publications had gained the attention of Newsweek, which assessed the coverage as “flattering (if somewhat boring) takeouts on executives and industries, plus spot news that sometimes scoops the metropolitan daily newspapers.” That same year, American City sold stock and began buying weekly business papers in other markets. By 1987, it owned 36 publications, primarily in smaller metropolitan markets such as Kansas City and Honolulu.
By 1989, the company was strapped for cash and ended up being sold to Ray Shaw, a former journalist at The Wall Street Journal who had risen to become president of Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent. In 1989, Shaw bought the American City papers with a partner and continued to expand the operation, buying additional papers in Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and San Jose. The company also started new publications in markets such as Greensboro, N.C.
In 1995, American City Business Journals was sold to Advance Publications, the parent company of Newhouse newspapers and Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, but a decade later Shaw remained in charge of the operation, which had since expanded its reach even further and now includes 41 weekly business newspapers. By comparison, Crain’s had business publications in six markets, including two in Mexico.