Washington Post Co. Acquires 'Foreign Policy'

The Washington Post Co. is buying Foreign Policy, a small but influential and much-garlanded magazine put out until now by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. FP will become part of the Slate Group, which has been rapidly growing of late, with the recent launches of business website The Big Money and an African-American targeted site, The Root. Bloomberg broke word of the Post-FP deal on Friday.

Here's the release.

The Washington Post Company To Acquire Foreign Policy Magazine WASHINGTON -- September 29, 2008 -- The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO) announced today that it has agreed to acquire Foreign Policy magazine, a two-time winner of the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence. The magazine and its award-winning website, foreignpolicy.com, have been published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank headquartered in Washington, DC. The transaction will close tomorrow. "Foreign Policy is a terrific magazine, and I'm pleased it will become a part of our company," said Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company. "Foreign Policy furthers our commitment to great magazine journalism and gives us another opportunity to expand our journalism online." The magazine was founded as a quarterly journal in 1970; it was relaunched as a glossy bimonthly magazine in 2000 by its current editor and publisher, Moises Naim, who will remain editor-in-chief. Taking on the world of global politics, economics and ideas as its mission, FP draws on leading journalists, thinkers and foreign policy practitioners for its trademark analysis and insight. Susan Glasser, a longtime Washington Post editor and foreign correspondent who served as co-bureau chief in Moscow and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will join Foreign Policy as executive editor. Foreign Policy will be part of The Slate Group. "Foreign Policy is thrilled to join The Post Company," said Moises Naim, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy. "In an era in which too many newspapers and magazines are retreating from international news, The Washington Post Company is smartly bucking the trend. Serving the expanding market of readers eager to understand how events in other countries affect them is what FP is all about, and that is why we are so excited to have The Washington Post Company as our new home." Foreign Policy, which is published in eight non-English editions and has a circulation of 100,000, also produces a fast-growing website and an award-winning daily blog, Passport. The magazine has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence for the past four years and won the award in both 2003 and 2007. "Always authoritative but never heavy-handed, Foreign Policy delivers on its mission to take readers beyond the facts to understand how the world works," said the citation for last year's award.

• Project Courthouse: NBCUniversal Wins a Court Fight Over Project Runway
• Tough Times: A Look at the Alabama Family Threatening the New York Times
• Credit Crunched: A Special Report on Wall Street Chaos
• Wealth in America: Portfolio.com and CNBC Take the Country's Economic Temperature