The blogTO team found out the company had been sold the same way many others did: by reading about it on the website.
I had signed the papers on a Friday. ZoomerMedia planned to announce the deal first thing Monday, and I wanted the people who read and followed blogTO, and the people who worked there, to hear it from me at close to the same moment. I spent the weekend writing an announcement for the site and going back and forth with Omri, who was putting together the company’s press release and needed a quote from me.
The release went out Monday morning. In my quote, I called the sale an exciting new chapter. I said that pairing our digital experience with ZoomerMedia’s resources “will allow us to quickly expand in ways that would not have been possible otherwise.”
Moments later I published my announcement. “Some big news today, at least for us, is that we have a new owner,” it began. I thanked everyone who had contributed over 17 years, and everyone who read the site or followed us on social media. Then I posted the link in an all-staff message on Slack and booked a Zoom call for later that morning.
The team was surprised. The two questions I remember most were “What does this mean for blogTO?” and “Why did you decide to sell?” Someone also asked about the price. I told them that ZoomerMedia was a public company, and that the number would have to come from them.
I told them I saw it as good news. We would have a new office at the ZoomerPlex in Liberty Village. We’d have more resources to draw on. We would switch to ZoomerMedia’s benefits plan, which was more comprehensive than ours, and for the first time we’d have support from an HR department. I stayed on the call until there were no more questions, then invited everyone to the ZoomerPlex to tour the building, meet Moses, and see our future office space.
After the meeting, I sent Moses a short note saying how much I was looking forward to what we could build together and how excited the team was. He wrote back quickly. He was eager to meet the team, and he shared my enthusiasm for everything we were going to do.