The business of acquiring newsletters has itself become a business, and Morning Brew Inc. appears to have figured out how to run it.

The digital publisher, which is owned by Axel Springer, has acquired Express Checkout, a newsletter and podcast operation that covers the consumer packaged goods industry. Terms were not disclosed, though the company said it was an all-cash deal. The co-founders, Nate Rosen and Jenna O'Brien, will join Morning Brew full time and continue to operate the brand independently.

Mr. Rosen started Express Checkout nearly four years ago as a weekly newsletter; Ms. O'Brien joined as co-founder two years later. The property now includes two newsletters, a podcast, short-form video, and events ranging from happy hours to private dinners. (The full-service approach to covering an industry vertical is not new, but the fact that two people can now do it from what was presumably a side project suggests something about where the leverage has shifted.)

The acquisition follows a pattern that Morning Brew has used before, according to Robert Dippell, the company's chief executive. The publisher has built or bought a series of verticals — HR Brew, Retail Brew, and so on — and is now layering creator-led brands alongside them. Express Checkout will complement Retail Brew's coverage of consumer packaged goods, Mr. Dippell said, but with "a different voice and different channels."

"They fit our culture and they represent the multichannel approach that we think is so important," Mr. Dippell said of the founders.

The deal is the second expansion this year for Mr. Dippell's group. In March, Axel Springer acquired Bisnow, the commercial real estate media company, and placed it alongside Morning Brew in a new division called Brew Media Group.

The arrangement offers a useful lens on how some publishers are thinking about growth in 2024: not as a hiring process or an editorial expansion, but as a kind of franchise model in reverse, where the franchisees already have the audience and the parent company provides the sales team.

"Anyone can be a content creator," Ms. O'Brien said. "The truth is that Morning Brew employs a lot of capital-J journalists, and the idea of collaborating with these tangential verticals and people in newsrooms is an edge."

Whether the edge holds will depend, as it always does, on whether the audiences follow.

Original story published in Adweek: "Morning Brew Acquires Express Checkout in Latest Creator Play"