Media General buys Richmond.com

Written by Aaron Kremer

Friday, 31 October 2008 16:31

Media General announced that it has acquired Richmond.com. Terms of the deal were not announced.

One source familiar with Richmond.com said that company’s biggest revenue came from real estate advertising, so this could be a play to try to recapture some of the bleeding newspaper real estate advertising.

No word yet on what Media General will do with the Richmond.com staff, but it seems unlikely that the company would keep two sales staff, especially since it has been training its own staff to become more effective at selling online ads to a local audience.

John Whitlock, the former owner of Richmond.com, said Media General will likely close Richmond.com's Main Street office and move the staff into its buildings on Franklin Street downtown. He also said he will not be involved after the transition is complete.

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written by Former Staff, October 31, 2008

A good chunk of the staff lost their jobs. Don't believe all this positive talk by MG and John Whitlock. He gave them three weeks pay. What a slap in the face. You mention revenue? Ha! What a joke. Richmond.com has not turned a profit since it's been around. Dig a little deeper and get the facts. I'd love to see a real story on this. I'd also like to see how much money MG paid.

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Makes Sense
written by Jeff, November 03, 2008

This makes sense. I was thinking about this over the weekend; how I used to buy ads from Richmond.com and richmond.citysearch.com. Citysearch pulled out of operating locally a long time ago and became a completely remote operation.

richmond.com has become amatuerish and hard to navigate. Nothing that ha made me want to go there everyday or sunbscribe to anykind of feed. I used to go there to check out restaurants, but the listings are way out of date and not very complete. As far as events, weekly rant has them beat for ease of use. Basically, richmond.com looks like an undercapitalized website that never made a profit.

inrich.com has started perking up, but is still run like a newpaper owns it. Blogs that don't link, going so mass appeal that there is no appeal. No real niche service. In short, just bland.

Maybe the two of them can create a local news and entertainment site worth visiting.

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