Mark's Mouth

Centerstage Acquired By Sun-Times

Well, it is about time! Keeping the lid on this was about the hardest thing to do, but now that we are public it is ALL GOOD.

and yes, I got a job too!

Read the story (according to ST): Sun-Times buys local entertainment Web site

Or read the story copied here for archival purposes:

August 2, 2006

BY LEWIS LAZARE
Marketing Columnist

Sun-Times News Group, which includes the Chicago Sun-Times, has acquired CenterstageChicago.com, a comprehensive online repository of information about Chicago.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

The CenterstageChicago site, founded 10 years ago by four Northwestern University graduates, bills itself as a city guide "by Chicago, for Chicago." The site covers everything from the city's bars and nightclubs to local health clubs, restaurants, museums and theater. In addition, visitors to the site can buy concert tickets and make hotel reservations.

Fred Lebolt, vice president for new media for Sun-Times News Group, said the Web site acquisition will for the first time present an easily searchable, entertainment and leisure-focused database online.

"We've had bits and pieces of what CenterstageChicago is all about, but never before this much localized information in one place," said Lebolt.

The CenterstageChicago site will appear as a separately branded link on the suntimes.com Web page, as well as those of the other 100 publications that make up the Sun-Times News Group. Initially, CenterstageChicago content, generated by a team of nearly 40 free-lance contributors and readers who visit the site, will remain separate and distinct from that presented on the Web sites of the various Sun-Times News Group publications. But Lebolt said, over time, ways to integrate the content of S-T News Group publications with CenterstageChicago will be developed.

Looking to suburbs in future

CenterstageChicago director Mark Roth and the site's editor, Kate Schwartz, will become full time staffers with Sun-Times News Group. Roth said his site is different from other competing city guide Web sites in the Chicago market, because of its intensely local, neighborhood-focused approach to gathering information. Roth said he expects eventually to extend his Web site's purview to cover the suburbs in just as localized a fashion as it does the city.

Roth said discussions about a Sun-Times News Group acquisition of the CenterstageChicago Web site began in earnest about a year ago. He and his Web site, which receives about 400,000 unique hits a month, had a pre-existing relationship with the Sun-Times because CenterstageChicago had provided a weekly entertainment insert for the now defunct Red Streak.

llazare@suntimes.com

Posted by sinergi at August 2, 2006 11:00 AM