James Murdoch buys up half of Vox Media, grabbing New York and podcasts, but leaving The Verge and SB Nation

This is May 2026 in digital media: Arguably the two most prominent digital media startups of the 2010s are both being sold — one to the former host of NBC reality show “Real People” (1979-84) and one to the primary inspiration for Kendall Roy (2018-23).

On May 11, it was standup-comic-turned-media-mogul Byron Allen acquiring a 52% share of BuzzFeed for $120 million, which he plans to use to make a…competitor to YouTube?¹ Sure thing. And today, nine days later, it’s James Murdoch, son of Rupert, who is spending more than $300 million to buy most of Vox Media.

A decade ago, BuzzFeed and Vox Media were valued at $1.7 billion and $1 billion — further evidence (as if we needed any) that 2016 was another universe. Here are the Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Jessica Testa:

James Murdoch is acquiring roughly half of Vox Media, a dramatic expansion in American media for the younger son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The deal includes Vox Media’s podcast network as well as New York magazine, a publication once owned by Mr. Murdoch’s father.

Mr. Murdoch, 53, emphasized that he was not looking to acquire a “daily news business” but rather wanted “longer-form, thoughtful journalism that can really speak to the culture,” he told The New York Times in an interview on Tuesday. “We want to create platforms where really amazing, talented people can come and do the best work of their lives.”

It’s a little sad that the third part of Vox Media that Murdoch is buying — Vox.com — doesn’t get mentioned in the Times story until the 10th paragraph, but that’s probably another sign of how far from 2016 we are. Here’s the corporate press release (Lupa Systems is Murdoch’s holding company):

“This acquisition aligns well with our existing holdings and investments and reflects both our interest in the forward edge of culture and our deep commitment to ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations,” said James Murdoch. “It will allow us to apply new tools across the businesses we are building, adding substantial production, distribution, and editorial capability to our group.”

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.

Murdoch’s “existing holdings and investments” include the Tribeca Film Festival and Art Basel. Longtime Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff will continue with the Murdoch-owned part of the company.

Vox Media’s collection of brands. The ones Murdoch isn’t buying are marked in red.

The parts of Vox Media that Murdoch isn’t buying — SB Nation, The Verge, Eater, The Dodo, and Popsugar — will be spun off into their own yet-to-be-named company. You might think of them as the ancien Vox Media — the blog-born sites that the company was originally built on. SB Nation (2005) and The Verge (2011) were the original two Vox Media sites. Eater (launched 2005, acquired 2013), Popsugar (launched 2006, acquired 2022), and The Dodo (launched January 2014, acquired 2022) also predate the April 2014 founding of Vox.com. Here’s the staff memo from Bankoff:

Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge are each in a strong place as distinct brands, and we have no plans to separate them. Each will continue under its current leadership, and Ryan will keep working closely with those leaders to deliver on every brand’s individual strategy. We have made real progress building a brand-led business, including a commercial structure designed to support each brand’s unique opportunity.

I confess that I have little confidence in Allen’s quixotic plans for BuzzFeed, whose business had already been poorly positioned in the years since Peak Facebook. But New York and Vox Media’s podcast network both seem to have steadier foundations and, with Bankoff and much of current management staying on, should be able to keep things going.

Maybe it’s unfair, but I can’t get my mind off of “Succession.” In Season 1, Waystar Royco — the show’s stand-in for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire — acquires Vaulter, a digital media company very much of that BuzzFeed/Vox Media wave (though it was really more like Gawker Media than anything else of that era). But by Season 2, it appears the financials aren’t working out for its particular collection of verticals (and unionization is on the march), so Logan Roy orders it shut down.

Then in Season 4, the Roy kids team up to plan Vaulter’s spiritual successor, The Hundred, a digital news site whose pitch deck managed to include all the era’s most annoying media-VC-isms:

A digital hub delivering all the essential information needed to navigate the now. The world’s leading experts provide humanity’s most valuable knowledge in bespoke bite-sized parcels, designed to improve the lives of subscribers and the world in general. The antidote to the modern malaise of empty-caloried input-overload…An independent bespoke information hub with the hundred greatest top writers, experts and minds in every field from Israel-Palestine to A.I. to Michelin restaurants. It’s a one-stop info shop, with high-calorie info-snacks…It’s like a private member’s club, but for everyone. It’s like clickbait, but for smart people.

The Hundred is, according to Kendall Roy, “Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker.” Of course, in the show, The Hundred gets quickly abandoned as an idea too. But if you were looking today at Vox Media’s properties, which ones look most like Vaulter? Probably the brands that were born in that early-2010s boom for bloggy, advertiser-friendly verticals. And which ones look most like The Hundred? Probably the brands that have elite cultural cachet (New York), news-cycle relevance (Vox.com), and expert-driven parasocial relationships (podcasts).

Look, neither of those fictional news sites is going to be a flattering comparison — it’s television, and they’re both played for laughs. But I can’t stop feeling like James Murdoch has decided to pass on Vaulter and buy The Hundred. For my money, Vox Media has been the most competently run of its peer digital media companies; while BuzzFeed and Vice had higher valuations at their peaks, the Vox Media assemblage of brands has maintained high quality and revenue diversification better than the rest — the digital Condé Nast. It’s sad to see it broken up, and I worry about a great site like The Verge being put on an ice floe on its own. But I suspect both halves of the company could have sustainable futures ahead.

1. It’s typically not a good sign when straight news stories about your strategy are using the word “quixotic.”