Q&A: How SiteMedia’s founders are shaking up industrial news

Following one of the biggest mergers ever for Canadian B2B industrial media, SiteMedia group is now the parent company of six news brands, including SiteNews, ReNew Canada, Water Canada, Environment Journal, Waste & Recycling and HAZMAT Management Magazine.

The plan is to create is to create a scaled, unified platform that delivers news, events, and business intelligence across the interconnected industries that build and sustain Canada. We sat down with SiteMedia co-founders Brett Rutledge and Andrew Hansen to better understand their bold vision and the strategies behind it.

SiteNews: Break it down for us. What’s changed, what’s staying the same and who is who?

Brett: The main brands that our readers know and trust are staying the same. SiteNews is still SiteNews, and the five publications from Actual Media, like ReNew Canada and Water Canada, will keep their well-established names.

What’s changed is that we now operate under a powerful new parent company called SiteMedia. This merger brings us to a new scale: half a dozen standalone publications, almost 30 employees, and a national events team coordinating over 25 industry-leading events.

Ultimately, the biggest change is the horsepower we can now bring to all our brands. We’re integrating our digital-first, modern media approach with Actual Media’s two decades of editorial excellence and trust. 

What is your vision for the future of industrial media and what advantages does this merger bring to the table for partners and readers?

Andrew: Looking over the fence, we’ve been inspired by media brands that create incredible news experiences, like the conversational tone of a MorningBrew, the “smart brevity” of Axios, or the deep-dive video quality of Andrew Chang’s ‘About That’ from CBC. Our goal is simple: to create a modern media company for leaders in the industrial sector.

The more you know your audience, the better you can serve them. That data only comes with scale, and that’s why this merger is so important for both our audience and our advertising partners.

Readers can expect us to double down on the content they love, now with more resources. We’ll use data and new capabilities to fine-tune what they read, watch, and listen to, ensuring it’s hyper-relevant to their job and interests.

And for partners and sponsors, this is a major win. They now have access to a significantly larger executive audience spanning connected niches, backed by a strong national events team and a data-driven content studio. The studio, in particular, opens up new opportunities to create sponsored content that builds awareness, trust, and measurable results, whether that’s driving sales or attracting top talent.

Your team has been grinding for more than three years now. What are some of the key strategies that got you to this point?

Brett: The big one for me is to experiment. And to hire people who bring that same mindset. Because most ideas fail – they don’t draw eyeballs or end up generating revenue. You have to have fun with constantly throwing stuff at the wall, until something sticks. You have to have fun failing.

Take our events for example. Early on, we decided to try throwing one to build some hype and it sold out. We had no idea we could do that, let alone generate significant revenue from it. Now, events are our main revenue driver, and we see how powerfully they connect our audience. Before that, Andrew and I had barely planned our own weddings (we both have much better halves to thank for that). We knew nothing about events. Yet, a year or two later, we now have people flying in from across the country and the U.S. to attend SiteSummit. That whole part of our business was born from a simple experiment.

Andrew: I think one of the biggest things has been continuously investing in ourselves. We’ve taken big swings – like building a large industrial film studio and even converting a sea can into a podcast studio. Those were major upfront costs, but they’ve completely changed the way we can deliver news and connect with our audience. In this industry, a lot of people are on the move. Listening to podcasts in their trucks or watching short videos between jobs – so meeting them where they’re at has been a game changer.

What drew you to Actual Media and what solidified for you that they were a good group to partner with?

Andrew: Initially, it was their legacy, something money can’t buy. Only putting in the time can really build that.

One evening Brett and I attended their Top 100 Projects event, we looked around and it was clear they had the who’s who of infrastructure there. That authority is the result of 20 years of producing high-quality industry reports, phenomenal magazine products, and consistently dialed-in events. They had built the foundation of trust we were seeking to align with.

Then we got to know their team and it just clicked. We saw they were great people who shared passion for doing impactful work. We knew our modern capabilities combined with their two decades of trust and editorial excellence would be a perfect match.

Take us back to when you started SiteNews. Neither of you had experience in news or journalism and few are looking to get into the media business. What prompted you to make this move?

Brett: Before SiteNews, we spent about eight years building a marketing agency that focused exclusively on the industrial and construction sectors. Andrew had worked in the industry for years, so he really understood it from the inside. Over time, we got really good at helping companies tell their stories, building brands, producing videos, and creating websites and campaigns that stood out.

But one of the biggest lessons we learned early on was that “build it and they will come” doesn’t work, especially in B2B. Content on its own rarely goes viral. You need distribution and a dedicated audience. And we noticed that no one in Canada was offering a modern, engaging news source for this space.

Andrew: Yeah, and we’d actually started exploring that gap about six years ago when we launched the 40 Under 40 Awards. The response was incredible. It really showed us the power of telling people’s stories and how much the industry valued recognition and community. Today, there are over 240 alumni from the program, and it’s still growing. That success made us realize we were onto something bigger – we could create something that connected and elevated the entire industry.

So, we made the leap and launched SiteNews. The goal was to build the audience our marketing clients wanted to reach, while also serving the industry with high-quality storytelling and insights. That’s how it all started. And now, here we are.

Both of you could have gone into other careers. Why construction? Why the industrial sector?

Andrew: I actually started out working in construction, spending a few years at Ledcor as a health & safety manager and holding a variety of roles across the industry. I fell in love with the people – there’s an authenticity and pride that runs deep in construction. Everyone’s focused on building something meaningful, whether it’s communities or critical infrastructure that keeps the country running. Even after I moved on from those roles, I realized I didn’t really leave the industry- I just found a different way to contribute to it.

You’ve described what you are building is as a scaled, unified platform. What do you mean by that and what does it look like?

Brett: I’d explain it in two parts. For readers, we now have a much larger, unified platform where we can use data to truly understand what content resonates. That becomes really powerful where our niche publications overlap. It helps us see trends, share insights, and create stories that are more relevant and impactful. With more resources behind us, our editors can collaborate across titles, exchange ideas, and tap into each other’s sources and relationships in ways we couldn’t before.

For sponsors, this creates a broader ecosystem of opportunities. You can reach across multiple industrial sectors or focus tightly on a specific niche – it’s incredibly flexible. And because we now have richer audience data, we can help guide messaging to make sure it connects with the right people and delivers real results.

Ok, no more softball questions. If you could snag an exclusive interview with anyone in history, who would it be and why?

Andrew: We’re both total media nerds, so I think I can speak for both of us when I say either Craig Fuller or Sean Griffey. We really admire the way they’ve built modern media companies – obsessing over their audience, focusing on quality, and constantly finding new ways to deliver value. That kind of audience-first mindset is something we try to model in everything we do.