City magazines Seattle Met and Portland Monthly have been sold off by their parent company, SagaCity, in a receivership deal to pay off the company’s debts.
In addition to the Seattle and Portland magazines the agreement includes Houstonia in Texas, Park City Magazine in Utah, and Aspen Sojourner and Vail Beaver Creek Magazine in Colorado. Court documents filed in King County put the purchase price at $1.6 million.
After the sale was finalized on March 23, the new Michigan-based owner Hour Media, which already publishes magazines in Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Atlanta, among others, laid off senior staff at several of the publications, including both Portland and Seattle’s Editors-in-Chief. Last day notices came on March 31 and April 1.
Seattle Met’s former EIC Eric Nusbaum posted on Bluesky Wednesday afternoon that his last day had been Tuesday. “I’m very grateful for the talented people I got to work with and very proud of the magazines we made. Hoping the publication can thrive under its new ownership,” he wrote.
In Portland, Brooke Jackson-Glidden, Portland Monthly’s former EIC announced the layoffs publicly on social media, briefly sketching the situation before saying: “I feel so, so proud of the work we’ve done over the last (almost) two years—please continue to support the super talented people who are still there.” Before Nusbaum was laid off, the editorial staff was already down to six people.
Jackson-Glidden also shared a form letter that sounds similar if not identical to letters received by laid-off staffers at Houston magazine Houstonia. In the letter, court-appointed receiver and attorney John Rizzardi advised laid-off staff that the pubs’ new owner “would not commit” to rehire, severance, or any other accommodations, writing: “This is the Purchaser’s prerogative.”
The cuts took staffing at Portland Monthly—colloquially called PoMo—from seven to four employees. Jackson-Glidden painted a portrait of an editorial team already spread thin; the publication’s managing editors were also helping edit Seattle Met and Houstonia. One of those editors Margaret Seiler will take over as Editor-in-Chief. The other, Sarah Nipper, was laid off along with associate editor Alex Frane.
SagaCity was deep in debt before the sale, court documents show. The company had taken out two enormous loans, $2.5 million from First Fed Bank and $2.1 million from the US Small Business Administration during the pandemic. Unable to pay those debts, SagaCity owner Nicole Vogel filed for receivership in King County, a legal process where an independent party sells off a company’s assets to pay off its creditors (in this case, First Fed, which received approximately $900,000 from the sale, according to court documents).
Nicole Vogel and her brother Scott Vogel founded Portland Monthly and parent company SagaCity in 2003 and expanded into Washington with the launch of Seattle Met in 2006. Housonia followed in 2013. SagaCity also acquired magazines in Utah and Colorado.
Seattle Met has won numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and The City and Regional Magazine Association in the last five years.
Portland Monthly achieved notoriety for its food criticism, especially that of James Beard Award-winner Karen Brooks. Jackson-Glidden expressed admiration for that legacy as a major factor that brought her over to PoMo from Eater PDX. “I wanted to be part of an organization that invested in food writing that way and also invested in really thoughtful, rigorous narratives and long-form journalism. So the idea that they would lay off not just me, but Alex Frane just seems like a complete misunderstanding of what makes our magazine special. I hope people continue to support the journalists who are still there, but gosh, I feel pretty sad.”
Hour Media President John Balardo did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said that the Portland Monthly‘s Editor-in-Chief helped edit other papers in the media group. Only the managing editors helped edit other papers.
