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Portland Monthly is under new ownership.
Hour Media, the largest publisher of city and regional magazines in the country, purchased SagaCity Media, the parent company of Portland Monthly on March 23. Hour is based in Michigan and publishes titles such as Hour Detroit, Minnesota Monthly, Cincinnati and Atlanta.
The purchase price was $1.6 million, according to court documents filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle.
The change in ownership has already meant big changes at Portland Monthly: Editor-in-chief Brooke Jackson-Glidden was laid off yesterday, she says. Some of the other staffers let go in the shakeup include associate editor Alex Frane, SagaCity managing editor Sarah Nipper, and Eric Nusbaum, the editor-in-chief of Seattle Met, another SagaCity property, Jackson-Glidden says.
Jackson-Glidden had edited Portland Monthly since 2024. She says she feels “extraordinarily proud” of the work she did with the team of “really talented writers and editors” at the magazine over the two years, but she’s concerned for its future. Two of the seven journalists on Portland Monthly’s masthead were laid off.
“I don’t know how Hour Media envisions the future of SagaCity or Portland Monthly, but I struggle to see how these conditions would allow for the editorial rigor and narrative depth that Portland Monthly is known for.”
SagaCity co-founder and CEO Nicole Vogel and Hour Media CEO John Balardo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hour Media has been on a bit of a shopping spree in recent months, also purchasing three magazines in Utah—Salt Lake, Utah Bride & Groom and Utah Style & Design—in late January, according to news reports. Hour purchased the following titles in the March 23 sale: Portland Monthly, Seattle Met, Houstonia, Aspen Sojourner, Vail-Beaver Creek and Park City magazines.
The terms of the deal are public because SagaCity had been part of a “receivership” in King County since November 2025. A receivership is a court-ordered process for a third party to manage a troubled business. Portland Monthly transitioned from a monthly to a quarterly publication in 2020.
