The Hill

Overview

The Hill is a family dynasty that became a media asset. Founded in 1994 by New York businessman Jerry Finkelstein — the Democratic power broker who ran the mayoral campaigns of Robert Wagner and John Lindsay — it was passed down to his son Jimmy, who ran it from 2012 until he sold it to Nexstar Media Group for $130 million in 2021. TheWrap The Deal Most summaries of the Washington political news site reduce it to “political newspaper, founded 1994” — but the father-to-son ownership story, and the Fox News veteran Nexstar installed atop its Washington newsroom in 2024, are what actually explain what The Hill is today. Adweek Nexstar

The editorial founding half of the partnership was Martin Tolchin, the New York Times’s longtime congressional correspondent and City Hall bureau chief, who became The Hill’s founding publisher and ran it for its first decade. Adweek His hire signaled the paper’s founding bet: inside-the-Beltway coverage with a reporter’s sensibility, built to rival the established Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Adweek

The $130 million sale to Nexstar

Nexstar, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country, bought The Hill from owner Jimmy Finkelstein in August 2021 for $130 million. TheWrap As part of the sale, Finkelstein stepped down as chairman — ending nine years at the helm since he succeeded his late father in 2012. TheWrap The sellers were Finkelstein and HRS Management, the family office of Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris. The Deal

The deal’s logic was Nexstar’s “content-first strategy”: The Hill, with just over 100 journalists, 48 million monthly active users and 2.2 billion page views in 2020 per comScore, would complement the company’s national cable news network NewsNation. TheWrap Nexstar president and COO Tom Carter called it an “independent, political digital media platform” reflecting the company’s “organization-wide commitment to deliver trusted, unbiased, fact-based journalism.” TheWrap Finkelstein, in what he called “a very emotional” farewell memo, called The Hill “the largest independent political media outlet” and said profits had been growing roughly 50% a year. TheWrap

The price looked small against Nexstar’s scale. The broadcaster, which owned nearly 200 stations and had acquired Tribune Media for $7.2 billion in 2019, booked $500 million in political advertising revenue in 2020 — up from $190 million in 2016 — including $298 million in the fourth quarter alone. The Deal A Wells Fargo analyst called the $130 million deal “a relatively small payout” for a company generating $1.33 billion in free cash flow, while noting the logic: The Hill dovetailed with NewsNation — the renamed WGN America cable channel — giving Nexstar a political news asset that fed both the network and its stations. The Deal

A Fox News veteran takes the Washington desk

In November 2024, Nexstar appointed Bill Sammon as senior vice president of Washington, D.C. Editorial Content for both The Hill and NewsNation, effective November 18. Nexstar Sammon arrived with nearly 40 years in journalism: he started at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, served as a war correspondent for Stars and Stripes in 1995, was the Washington Times’ White House correspondent, and joined Fox News in 2008 — where, on the network’s decision desk in 2020, he was the first to declare Joe Biden the winner in Arizona, the call that helped set off the election-night furor. Nexstar He is also the author of six books on the presidency, four of them New York Times bestsellers. Nexstar

Under Nexstar, The Hill’s reporting has continued to move Washington’s news cycle. It reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pick of Sean Parnell for Army secretary was drawing a cool reception on Capitol Hill — with Armed Services Committee members in both parties doubtful the former congressional candidate could be confirmed — amid jockeying that also featured Marc Andersen and Derrick Anderson as alternatives. The Hill And it covered the moment cable news split from its parent brands: MSNBC’s official rebrand to MS NOW — “My Source for News, Opinion and the World” — as Comcast spun most of its cable networks into the new company Versant, with programs continuing on the same channels. The Hill

What this profile does not claim

It does not assert a single current traffic figure: the 48-million-users number is a 2020 comScore measurement cited at the time of the sale, and later third-party trackers put 2025 visits lower. TheWrap It does not claim The Hill is nonpartisan as an editorial fact — it reports how Nexstar and Finkelstein described the outlet (“independent,” “unbiased, fact-based”) without endorsing the characterization. TheWrap The Deal And it does not repeat the layoffs and contract disputes of the NewsGuild era, which were not covered in the sources read in full.