Young Adult Content and Commerce hub Newcity.com Acquires SportsJones.com

CHICAGO (May 2, 2000) Newcity.com, a young adult content and commerce hub linked to a national network of alternative city and content Web sites, has completed the acquisition of SportsJones.com, the online magazine for sports, it was announced today by Brian Hieggelke, President of Newcity.

Royce Webb, the founder, editor and publisher of two year-old SportsJones, will join Newcity.com to begin the integration of daily sports coverage into Newcity.com's mix of 67 content and city web sites. Other members of the staff will follow shortly.

"The Web is drenched in sports coverage, but the proportion of it that delves into the intricacies of competition and the mind-sets of the players is about as scarce as goals at the World Cup," says Mr. Hieggelke. What Salon Magazine is for culture and politics, SporstJones is for sports. ESPN calls SportsJones 'the thinking fan's sports site,' and the Wall Street Journal says, 'Amid the Internet's sports clutter of shrieking fan pages and colorless wire stories, SportsJones stands out.'.

"Sports is a core area of interest for our young adult audience, yet one of the weakest coverage areas in the alternative press," Mr. Hieggelke adds. "This acquisition is a way to jumpstart our entry into that area, with a staff and relationships in place, a good brand name, and an emerging reputation and base of traffic."

The site has been nominated as a finalist for the prestigious Webby Award, in the company of large sites like ESPN.com and FoxSports.com. SportsJones has attracted the attention of larger players in the online media space, who have secured syndication rights to its content. "We believe that this is entirely consistent with our B2B2C model of building a simultaneous consumer strategy while operating as a "wholesaler" of content and services to other businesses, and expect to develop this revenue stream substantially," says Mr. Hieggelke.

In 1999, of Nashville, Tenn.-based SportsJones became a content partner with Newcity.com helping drive network traffic to over 14 million ad impressions served on a monthly basis from just under 5 million a year earlier. Terms of the acquisition of SportsJones, Inc., which is relocating to Newcity¹s Chicago headquarters, are not disclosed.    

Newcity.com is a subsidiary of Newcity Communications, Inc., a 14-year old media company based in Chicago that excels in reaching today's generation of young adults. In addition to Newcity.com, Newcity operates Newcity magazine, an alternative weekly distributed in Chicago; and Newcity National Sales, a business specializing in the sale of national print advertising in more than 100 alternative weeklies.

Contact:

George H. Simpson
georgehsimpson@att.net
(212) 297-1838