Roll Call Buys Law Advocacy Resource for $43 Million

Roll Call Group, publisher of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, said Friday that it purchased Capitol Advantage, an online and print resource for advocacy groups, for $43 million.

"It'll be a one-stop shop for people who need information about Congress," said Barkley Kern, executive vice president of Capitol Advantage.

The group also plans to use its combined technology to launch additional services, he said.

Fairfax-based Capitol Advantage alerts advocacy groups to new legislation and provides tools to automate grass-roots letter-writing campaigns. The company Web site says it delivered more than 12.7 million messages to elected officials so far this year.

The group also sells a congressional directory, legislative data and a tool to automate political action committee compliance reports.

The acquisition, which has been in the works for about six months, is the latest in Roll Call Group's expansion. In October 2006, Roll Call, a publication of the Economist Group, bought GalleryWatch, which provides legislative monitoring and intelligence tools, for about $6.1 million in cash and the possibility of roughly $2.6 million in later compensation. Last year, the group launched CongressNow, a midafternoon newsletter and legislative wire service.

The Capitol Advantage acquisition is a major addition for Roll Call Group, which, along with European Voice, the Economist's other government brand, pulled in roughly $33.6 million in revenue and $9.6 million in profit in the year ending March 31, according to the Economist Group's annual report.

"It's a very large acquisition not just for Roll Call, but for the Economist as a whole," said Roll Call Group managing director Laurie Battaglia, who said there are no plans for layoffs and that she hopes to add staff. "This is not a consolidation of forces. The goal would be to add bodies."

Roll Call Group has about 100 employees and Capitol Advantage has about 70.