Is Vox in good hands?

PLUS: What Audible's new payout system means for indie authors

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Is Vox in good hands?

Vox Media announced that several of its properties — New York Magazine, Vox.com, and the Vox podcast network — have been sold to a holding company owned by James Murdoch:

The properties, known for editorial excellence and deeply engaged audiences, will operate as a subsidiary of Lupa Systems called Vox Media. Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge are not included in the transaction …

Lupa’s acquisition of New York Magazine includes its must-read verticals, The Cut, Vulture, Intelligencer, The Strategist, Curbed, and Grub Street. Vox brings multiplatform leadership in video, text, and podcasts like Today, Explained. The Vox Media Podcast Network, home to popular shows such as Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, Criminal, and Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel, has been the fastest growing business within Vox Media and will immediately put Lupa at the top of the podcast field, which now reaches 58% of Americans monthly, according to Edison Research, including two out of three people between the ages of 18 and 54.

The new Vox Media will be led by Jim Bankoff, who co-founded Vox Media and has led its growth since its early days as a network of a dozen grassroots sports blogs. He will be CEO of the new company upon closing.

It’s been rumored for months that Bankoff was looking to sell off various parts of Vox Media. Early reports suggested he might spin out the podcast network as a standalone acquisition target, but that strategy only really made sense if the buyer was a larger media company. As others have pointed out, Vox’s podcast network doesn’t actually own much of its most valuable IP. Instead, it functions primarily as a production and advertising partner for shows led by personalities like Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway, and Esther Perel.

Because of that, the podcast network still benefits heavily from the marketing and distribution power of the larger media brand. Without those audience synergies, its main value-add is reduced to ad sales. Since Murdoch doesn’t control a broad portfolio of outside media assets, it’s probably a good thing that he acquired additional Vox Media properties alongside the podcast division. That at least preserves some ability to cross-promote and drive audience growth across the network.

The bigger question is whether Murdoch will ultimately be a good steward of Vox Media.

The prevailing rumor is that he sees the acquisition partly as revenge for being pushed aside by his father and brother at Fox — an opportunity to build a left-of-center counterweight to Fox News. Combined with the enormous financial resources at his disposal — including the reported $3.1 billion payout from his Fox buyout — that suggests he may be willing to invest aggressively in the company, at least in the near term.

But as we’ve learned recently, billionaires’ loyalty to the media companies they acquire has a shelf life. Oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong initially plowed tens of millions of dollars into the Washington Post and LA Times, respectively, before losing their patience and gutting those properties.

That said, Murdoch isn’t just another wealthy outsider dabbling in media ownership. While being groomed to eventually lead Fox Corporation and News Corp, he held senior roles across nearly every corner of the business, from Hollywood to broadcasting to newspapers. His family has historically been willing to sustain losses on media properties for years in pursuit of influence and long-term positioning. Whatever else can be said about the Murdochs, they genuinely care about the media business.

It’s also notable that Bankoff is reportedly staying on as CEO. That likely provides some reassurance to senior staffers, since it suggests the new owner won’t immediately begin gutting the company or replacing leadership wholesale.

Then there are the remaining Vox Media properties that weren’t included in the deal. I can’t speak much to Eater or SB Nation since I’m not a regular reader of either, but The Verge stands out as a particularly strong niche brand. For several years now, it has been actively adapting to the realities of the modern media landscape, building out a subscription business while editor-in-chief Nilay Patel has focused heavily on strengthening the site’s owned distribution channels.

The Verge would probably make for an attractive acquisition target on its own. But honestly, it would be even more interesting to see Patel raise money to buy the publication himself. It’ll never become a billion-dollar company, but I could absolutely see it operating as a durable, independently-run business with a healthy profit margin — and that kind of ownership structure would align naturally with the site’s editorial identity.

ICYMI: The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsrooms

News Movement editor in chief Rebecca Hutson outlined the company’s platform-native storytelling strategy.

That case study actually sits behind a paywall, but if you’re not ready to subscribe, I also included it in an ebook that you can download over here.

Creators will use AI even if Hollywood doesn’t

Puck wrote about SAG-AFTRA’s recent deal with the major Hollywood studios — and its surprising decision to largely avoid negotiating over the studios’ use of AI:

To be fair, union leadership was understandably focused on stabilizing pension and health plans while also securing meaningful streaming residual gains. Still, it’s hard not to wonder what comes next. Producers now need only an “articulable business reason” to scan actors they hire. They don’t need to disclose that reason, either—they can merely notify the union and engage in discussions before licensing films and television shows for third-party A.I. training. SAG-AFTRA has no veto …

The language is squishy enough to suggest both sides were deeply motivated to keep the A.I. issue from blowing up the deal altogether. Better, perhaps, to preserve the right to object and the right to gather discovery than to force a clean answer today. That leaves the hard conversations for a later fight—whether that arrives in arbitration or during the next bargaining cycle, now four years away instead of the usual three.

So what’s going on here? This is purely speculation, but my guess is that SAG-AFTRA and many of its members recognize that their victory during the 2023 negotiations was, in some ways, a pyrrhic one. The strike effectively shut down Hollywood for half a year, giving the Creator Economy an opportunity to gain an even larger foothold in entertainment. By the time studio production resumed, it was increasingly clear that the industry had little chance of returning to its pre-COVID highs. Neither side seemed eager to risk another prolonged standoff that could trigger yet another painful shutdown.

There’s also likely a growing industry-wide acceptance that AI is here to stay. Creators will continue incorporating the technology into production workflows, so studios may argue that restricting its use too heavily would only leave them further behind. And if the goal is to preserve jobs and keep studios financially healthy enough to continue hiring talent, then there’s at least some incentive for both sides to find a workable middle ground rather than wage another existential battle over the technology.

(BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

Why do news organizations so often nuke their own IP?

Nate Silver wrote about his discovery that Disney had wiped the entire archives of FiveThirtyEight:

Here are some numbers roughly in the right ballpark: during the Disney era, which lasted about 10 years, FiveThirtyEight published about 20 stories a week. Let’s say that each story took about 20 hours to produce between research, writing, graphics and editing.3 Do the math, and that works out to about 200,000 person-hours of work that ABC News just deleted.

What’s probably harder to see from the outside is that none of this was ever smooth sailing: that content was produced through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (sometimes literally on certain election nights).

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Media outlets going through reorganizations, site redesigns, or broader strategic shifts will routinely nuke entire content archives rather than doing the relatively minor work required to preserve them.

But this is essentially IP destruction, and it makes very little sense. Consider that Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly sold to Paramount for $110 billion largely because of the value of its content library. Meanwhile, many news organizations behave as though their archives lose all value within days of publication.

Yes, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. News content loses relevance much faster than Hollywood films and TV shows. But there was presumably still meaningful search traffic flowing into those FiveThirtyEight archives, along with traffic to articles that linked back to them. As Nate Silver detailed in the essay linked above, he discovered the deletion while conducting research for a new article — evidence that those archives were still providing real value to working journalists.

Which raises the obvious question: Did anyone at Disney actually assess the long-term value of those archives before deleting them, or was the decision made on a whim?

My grand theory of media

I recently went on the Going Direct podcast and was asked a lot of good questions about the current state of media. I like doing these because it gives me the opportunity to pull all the various threads I’ve been touching on in the newsletter into one semi-cohesive thesis about how the media is evolving.

Check it out on YouTube.

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It doesn’t matter if you’re a YouTuber, podcaster, newsletter writer, or traditional news publisher — you’re going to find strategies here that you can incorporate into your own business.

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This independent magazine publisher doubled down on print

After spending several years helping launch food and travel magazines in London, Krista Faist returned to Toronto with a simple idea: replicate the free magazine model that was thriving across the UK transit system. In 2015, she launched Twenty Two Media Group and started building two media outlets into lifestyle brands focused on food, travel, and culture. What began as a one-person operation has since grown into a media company spanning print, digital, events, and now shortform video.

In a recent interview, Faist explained how she landed major advertisers before the first print issue even launched, why she still believes premium print magazines have real value in a digital-first media landscape, and how Twenty Two Media Group is expanding into vertical video and creator partnerships while keeping print at the center of the business.

Check out the interview on YouTube.

If you want to listen to an audio version, subscribe to the Business of Content wherever you get your podcasts: [Apple] [Spotify]

Quick hits

The podcast industry now generates $9.2 billion a year, with a substantial portion of that revenue coming from video. [Bloomberg] (I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

Roku licensed a bunch more content from YouTubers. FAST channels are becoming a great means for revenue diversification, especially since they likely don’t cannibalize YouTube viewership very much. Presumably, streaming companies like Roku can generate higher CPMs on advertising since their content is more premium, on average. [Hollywood Reporter]

Spotify’s push into audiobooks has forced Audible to open its all-you-can-listen offering to indie authors. Starting at the end of 2026, the company will also begin pooling subscription revenue and paying authors based on the number of listening hours they generate each month. The Bottom Line interviewed several indie writers about the change, and they said the new system rewards shorter works and authors who have a large back catalog. [The Bottom Line]