He added, “I think media is a very simple business that people often overcomplicate.”
Mr. Williams, who grew up in a Florida beach town and played on the Washington and Lee University golf team, will continue to run the site – which will be renamed Axios Charlotte – after Axios takes control. He will also become the general manager of Axios’ local news collection.
Axios has excelled at covering topics important to centers of power – Washington, Wall Street, Silicon Valley – and his newsletters have attracted sponsorship money from companies hoping to influence lawmakers and decision-makers. Facebook, for example, which is under attack from both sides of the political gang, is a sponsor of “Axios AM”, its largest newsletter.
Axios expects to generate more than $ 61 million in revenue this year – a 40 percent increase from last year – and remain profitable, said two people with knowledge of its finances. The company has 1.4 million email subscribers and has raised about $ 57 million to date. It has been estimated at more than $ 200 million.
For its local expansion, Axios plans to employ two people in each new city, who will compile a daily morning newsletter, and hopes to add staff in all cities over time. Technology, assembly and other support are centralized at Axios headquarters to keep costs down.
The Charlotte Agenda has gained a following in part by leveraging social platforms in ways that many traditional news companies have yet to adopt. When Katie Peralta was a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, she recalled that her friends and family often spoke about what they had read in The Charlotte Agenda. She said it irritated her if her younger sister said that “according to the agenda of the Instagram calendar, such a business is going to close,” Ms. Peralta said.
“I saw this as competition because I was on the corporate beat,” she said. “So whenever they brag to me, I got upset.”
Ms. Peralta made the uncomfortable decision to leave the Observer for The Charlotte Agenda last year. “The Observer is one of the most respected and established publications in the Carolinas,” she said. But the idea of leaving became easier to justify when she witnessed cuts in the Observer’s newsroom.