The Hill Is Sold to a TV Giant

The political news publication, which started as an insider’s guide to Washington and greatly expanded its audience after it went digital, fetched a price of $130 million.

The local television behemoth Nexstar Media Group announced Friday that it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 million.

Nexstar, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country, said in a news release that the deal would expand its digital reach and coverage of political news. The deal also unites two companies that have sought, with mixed results, to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment.

“I like to say that we’re as far to the left as the right will go and as far to the right as the left will go,” Jimmy Finkelstein, who took a controlling stake in The Hill in 2014, said in an interview. Nexstar, he added, is “very much interested in that fit — they’re very balanced.”

Nexstar, based in Irving, Texas, became the country’s largest local TV operator when it acquired Tribune Media in 2018 in a $4.1 billion deal, gaining 42 television stations and a cable network. It now has 199 stations across the United States, including NewsNation, a cable outlet based in Chicago that the company envisions as a competitor to Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

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