accelerate360, which announced a merger plan with McClatchy, publishes magazines including Us Weekly, In Touch Weekly, Woman’s World and Life & Style. a360 image

McClatchy reported Friday that it completed its merger with magazine publisher accelerate360 announced back in August.

A reporter with McClatchy — the Sacramento-based publisher of The Fresno Bee, Kansas City Star, Miami Herald and 27 other newsrooms nationwide — wrote the deal is one of the largest of its kind in local news in years.

The new entity, called McClatchy Medica Company, has a total audience of more than 100 million unique visitors a month. It joins a line of lifestyle magazines including Us Weekly, In Touch Weekly and Soap Opera Digest with a local news chain that has won more than 50 Pulitzer Prizes.

McClatchy’s magazines will be part of a new lifestyle and entertainment division of the company, operating alongside the news division, company executives said. A third division will focus on the distribution business.

In an interview, McClatchy Chairman and CEO Tony Hunter, who will continue at the helm of the new company, said the merger puts McClatchy Media on a more solid financial footing and will “create meaningful free cash flow” for growth – a transformation he characterized as “dramatic and significant” for the company’s brands. “We have a mission that has been at the core of our focus, our north star, of getting to a digitally driven, sustainable business model in order to sustain and invest in local journalism,” Hunter said. “That is unchanged. And to do that, we need to be a diversified media company.”

McClatchy and accelerate360 are owned by Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey-based hedge fund. Chatham Asset Management completed the purchase of McClatchy out of bankruptcy protection in September 2020 in a deal valued at $312 million.