Seattle online magazine Grist acquires Pacific Standard assets to keep years of content accessible

Grist, the Seattle-based non-profit online magazine that has covered climate, sustainability, social justice and more for 20 years, has acquired the assets of Pacific Standard, a magazine focused on many of the same issues, which closed last year.

In a note to readers on Tuesday, Grist CEO Brady Piñero Walkinshaw credited Pacific Standard’s “hard-hitting and impactful long-form journalism,” which he said encouraged readers “to think about how society works, and how it could work for the better.”

According to Axios’ Sara Fischer in her Media Trends newsletter, Walkinshaw said there is no cash component to the deal, that it was not a purchase.

Grist’s interest lies in maintaining public access to more than 20,000 stories published over Pacific Standard’s 13-year lifetime. Fischer said that content attracts an audience of 1 million readers per month and generates ad revenue of about $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

“The content collected at psmag.com reflects years of work by a community of incredibly talented reporters, editors, photojournalists, and creatives,” Walkinshaw wrote. “It holds immense value to the public in a time when journalism — especially the deep, longform, heavily fact-checked kind Pacific Standard was known for — is more critical than ever.”