Guardian Acquires PaidContent Parent Co. for $30 Million

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 11, 2008 - 7:49am.

Los Angeles - Digital business news publisher PaidContent's parent company ContentNext has been acquired by U.K.-based Guardian News & Media (GNM), for a price "north of $30 million," All Things D reported. "We were planning another round of funding and were not out shopping the company but when Guardian approached us, all the pegs fit into the right holes: a company that will help us scale, add to our existing portfolio of products, and most importantly, help keep 'Our Essence of Being' intact," PaidContent founder Rafat Ali said in a post on the site.

"For our team, the biggest consideration was working with a media company known for its journalistic integrity, its long-term view of businesses -- and its international outlook in editorial coverage as well as business."

Santa Monica, Calif.-based PaidContent was founded in 2002 by journalist Rafat Ali, and now encompasses a family of sites that includes MocoNews and PaidContent UK, as well as a series of events.

Ali said that ContentNext will remain a standalone business under GNM.

"We have long been admirers of Rafat and the business he has built, which is an indispensable resource for so many senior people in our industry," said Tim Brooks, the managing director of GNM.

"So we are genuinely excited at the prospect of being able to help Rafat, [CEO] Nathan [Richardson] and the team take ContentNext to the next level."