Economist Group to sell CQ Roll Call to FiscalNote
The Economist Group plans to sell CQ Roll Call to technology and data startup FiscalNote, with the acquisition expected to close later this year, the companies announced Wednesday.
Following the deal, the Economist Group — publisher of The Economist magazine — would take on an 18 percent equity stake in the combined company, and its chief executive, Chris Stibbs, would join FiscalNote’s Board of Directors. Tim Hwang, the founder and CEO of FiscalNote, would continue to lead the company.
The Economist Group, which purchased Capitol Hill-focused newspaper Roll Call in 1992, added CQ, the congressional news and policy publication, in 2009 in a deal reported to be around $100 million. No sale price was announced Wednesday, but it is expected to be released when the deal is completed.
Hwang, who launched FiscalNote in 2013 at 21 years old, said in an interview that the company’s mission is “to connect the world to their governments” by providing information about how governments operate and their impact on the public. The company uses technology to aggregate and analyze legislation and government filings.
“As we were growing this business and listening to the market, we increasingly heard louder and louder requests from customers who asked for a different type of information — more editorial, more context,” Hwang said. The editorial component of CQ Roll Call, Hwang said, will complement FiscalNote’s technology.
Stibbs told POLITICO that the Economist Group was not intending to sell CQ Roll Call when it began conversations with Hwang around 12 to 18 months ago. Stibbs said they were “looking for ways to accelerate growth” through a strategic partnership, but the discussions evolved into selling outright.
It’s unclear how FiscalNote will manage a news organization like CQ Roll Call, a staple of Washington political and policy reporting.
Roll Call boasts a distinguished alumni network, including CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, CNN’s Jake Tapper, MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, and POLITICO and Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei. HuffPost congressional reporter Matt Fuller tweetedWednesday that about half of the dozen reporters currently in the House press gallery once worked at CQ Roll Call.
And some Roll Call alumni urged FiscalNote to maintain its journalistic legacy when it takes control of the newsroom.
Paul Kane, who now covers Congress for the Washington Post, suggested FiscalNote not follow in the tradition of Tronc, the Chicago-based newspaper chain that slashed the newsroom of the New York Daily News earlier this week. “You just bought a treasured DC media institution,” Kane tweeted. “If you plan to Tronc them, please just cancel sale & let someone who wants to succeed buy them.”
Abby Livingston, another alum and currently Washington bureau chief for the Texas Tribune, asked FiscalNote to “please, please, take care of” the publication. “It’s a very necessary institution for a functioning democracy,” she added.
Hwang said it was too early to discuss any changes at CQ Roll Call, emphasizing that they would not make any moves “until we’ve had sufficient time to learn about the businesses and the processes.”
Stibbs said the motivation behind the deal isn’t to scale back editorial. The discussions, he said, tend “to be how we leverage the newsroom and editorial and less about how we cut costs.”
In addition, Stibbs said the Economist Group wouldn’t have sold to FiscalNote if they didn’t believe the company would honor editorial integrity, which “is really in our DNA.”
Hwang told POLITICO FiscalNote’s leaders “are strongly committed to editorial independence.”