Founding and early years The company was formed as a newspaper in 1994 by
power broker and New York businessman
Jerry Finkelstein, and
Martin Tolchin, a former correspondent for
The New York Times. New York Representative
Gary L. Ackerman was also a major shareholder. In 2012, James A. Finkelstein assumed control of the organization.
Digital distribution and print circulation In 2016,
The New York Times reported that
The Hill was "proceeding with ambitious expansion plans" to become a national brand publication, and its website traffic increased 126% over the prior year, and was above
Politico's traffic for the period. Following the
2016 U.S. presidential election,
The Street reported that
The Hill saw the largest increase in online political readership among political news sites, with an increase of 780%. CNN and Politico saw smaller increases over the period, making
The Hill "the fastest-growing political news site". In 2017,
The Hill was also cited by Twitter as one of the top 10 "most-tweeted" news sources. A 2017 study by the
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at
Harvard University found that
The Hill was the second most-shared source among supporters of
Donald Trump on Twitter during the election, behind
Breitbart News. In 2017,
The Hill hired
John Solomon as executive vice president of digital video. Solomon inserted material from advertisers into journalistic copy, leading to protests from
The Hills publisher. In March 2018, he worked closely with associates of
Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of U.S. President
Donald Trump, to promote the spurious
Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory. In September 2019, he left
The Hill. In January 2019,
CNN reported that current and former staff said Finkelstein interfered in the
editorial independence of the paper by "keeping a watchful eye on the newspaper's coverage to ensure it is not too critical" of President Trump. In 2020, it was again ranked second for online politics readership across all news sites, behind only CNN. It remained ahead of
Politico,
Fox News,
NBCNews.com and
MSNBC. the newspaper claims to have more than 22,000 print readers. In 2021,
The Hill was acquired by
Nexstar Media Group for $130 million. In 2022,
The Hill was accused of censorship after firing
Katie Halper for a segment supporting
Rashida Tlaib's labeling of Israel as an "apartheid government". In 2024,
Briahna Joy Gray was fired after appearing to
roll her eyes while discussing the
allegations of sexual violence against Israeli hostages during an interview with the sister of an Israeli who was abducted by
Hamas in the
October 7 attacks. Between September 2024 and September 2025,
The Hill’s overall social media traffic increased by 20 percent, with the newspaper noting increased political engagement and more frequent video posting by its reporters. ==Features and editions==