James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch, is buying a chunk of Vox Media properties for over $300 million, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Vox itself, the company’s podcast network, and New York Magazine and subsidiaries will retain the Vox Media name, with Vox Media co-founder Jim Bankoff–who has given every impression he is tired media and the people who work in it–remaining at the helm as CEO.
According to an internal email published by Business Insider, the remaining ex-Vox sites–which include The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, and others–will become a new company with a new name and will stay together. That company will be led by current Vox president Ryan Pauley. “Separating into two distinct companies best sets up our brands, shows, businesses, talent and teams to continue to lead and prosper in the changing media landscape,” Bankoff wrote.
There’s been rumblings about all this for a while, in particular Bankoff’s interest in spinning off the podcast network. After selling Polygon to Valnet a year ago, many of us obsessed with media gossip started seeing the writing on the wall for Vox as a network. I’m both relieved the other sites are continuing and worried about what the future holds for them–this transaction sure looks like Bankoff taking what I imagine feel like Vox’s most mainstream and profitable assets and leaving the rest behind. At the same time, maybe the remaining sites can flourish free from Bankoff, who has overseen multiple rounds of layoffs in the last few years, most recently in January.
This sale comes roughly a week after Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti sold Buzzfeed and HuffPost to Byron Allen, who owns multiple TV networks including The Weather Channel, and whose talk show Comics Unleashed is set to replace Stephen Colbert’s Late Show this week. Peretti will become president of Buzzfeed AI (not a surprise), while Allen hopes to turn what was once news outlets into something that can compete with YouTube, telling The Washington Post that “Anybody who’s putting up content, they can put it up at YouTube. And now, pretty soon, they’re going to also be able to put it up at BuzzFeed,” whatever the hell that means.
The previous era of the digital media network has long felt like it’s ending, with Vice’s worker-devastating bankruptcy in 2024 and the degradation and ultimate destruction of the Gawker network following its own bankruptcy and ultimate sale to G/O Media, which put the whole thing out of its misery in 2025. (Aftermath’s staff previously worked at G/O and Vice.) Companies like G/O and Vox were acquisition-happy just a few years prior, consolidations that we’re now feeling the consequences of as one business decision has the power to affect the lives of numerous workers, as we’ve seen with IGN’s purchase of Gamer Network. With fewer companies owning outlets, and some of those that remain owning more and more, journalists have fewer places to go if they’re laid off or their companies change beyond recognition, and these decisions can affect multiple outlets readers depend on.
But media networks were also a strength for readers and workers (and, I imagine but do not terribly care about, for owners). I saw this myself at Gawker, where readers could hop from one site to another to learn new things or get more context on the day’s news, and where I as an editor was surrounded by colleagues with a variety of knowledge and expertise. As the ad market tanks and AI eats the lunch of outlets that depend on search, it’s perhaps no wonder owners want to slim down their companies or exit digital media altogether, but it ultimately means less reliable news for readers and less opportunities for writers.
But Peretti and Bankoff and Vice’s Shane Smith and that company’s cadre of suits and even god help me G/O’s Jim Spanfeller will all get out with their own bags, as they always do, while journalists face an uncertain future in a terrible time for imagining the future at all. Sincere good luck to the Vox journalists who now have to work for a Murdoch, and good luck to the writers at Untitled Digital Media Company as they face what’s next.
