DorobekInsider.com: Is the Economist’s CQ marriage official?

It has been one of the worst kept secrets in DC — the Economist Group is likely the winning bidder for Congressional Quarterly group, some blogs sites are...

It has been one of the worst kept secrets in DC — the Economist Group is likely the winning bidder for Congressional Quarterly group, some blogs sites are reporting.

No official announcement yet from either CQ nor the Economist Group, but we expect an official announcement… well, any time now.

CQ is owned by Florida-based Times Publishing Company, which owns the St. Petersburg Times. And, just to make it more complex, the controlling stock of the the Times Publishing Company is owned by the The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit school for journalists, also located in St. Petersburg.

In January, Times Publishing officials announced the company’s intention to sell CQ.

“CQ, which was founded in 1945 by Nelson Poynter, then owner of the St. Petersburg Times, now derives the bulk of its revenue from its subscription site, CQ.com,” according to Wikipedia.

A number of interesting items here, if/when the buy becomes officially official.

* Will we find out how many bidders there were? There were reports that there were a number of interested parties, but that essentially The Economist was the only publisher that was really competitive.

* Roll Call v Politico… The Economist Group already owns Roll Call newspaper, the Capitol Hill publication. Roll Call has been under pressure from Politico, part of Robert L. Allbritton’s media group, which also includes DC’s WJLA-TV ABC-7 and News Channel 8. If the Economist is able to pull the pieces together, it could provide a powerful reportorial force for covering DC’s political workings.

* The Mike Mills connection… If the buy does go through, it would reunite Mike Mills, the editorial director for Roll Call, with CQ. Before joining Roll Call, Mills had served as editor of the Washington Business Journal, but before that, he was CQ’s executive editor for electronic publishing.

Of course, no deal is done before it is signed off, but… we continue to stand by for news.

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