Bear in mind final month when James Murdoch’s Lupa Programs acquired roughly half of Vox Media, particularly New York Journal, Vox and its podcast community?
Nicely, the opposite shoe – err, sale – has dropped, additional affecting future alternatives for advertisers and journalists alike.
On Thursday, Penske Media Company introduced it will likely be buying the opposite half of Vox Media’s belongings. Affected manufacturers embrace The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, The Dodo, Popsugar, Punch and Thrillist.
Monetary phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed. For comparability’s sake, nevertheless, Murdoch spent $300 million on his personal acquisition. PMC additionally beforehand invested $100 million in Vox Media again in 2023, giving it the most important stake within the enterprise at 20%.
Both manner, the deal makes PMC the most important digital writer on this planet, in line with the corporate’s personal press launch. The corporate already owns an enormous rolodex of manufacturers that embrace Selection, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to a number of occasions and award reveals just like the Golden Globes.
All of PMC’s writer manufacturers will probably be folded into a brand new subsidiary referred to as PMX, which former Vox Media President Ryan Pauley will oversee.
Finish of an period
The sale received’t come as a shock to anybody who’s been following Vox’s enterprise strikes, and never simply due to the Murdoch deal in late Might.
In 2025, the corporate offered off considered one of its hottest manufacturers, the online game web site Polygon, to Valnet. Later that yr, as Semafor and Axios each reported, the corporate had already been fascinated by spinning off after which promoting its podcast enterprise. Penske had even expressed curiosity in Vox’s digital media manufacturers, however not its podcast community, which was valued at a a lot larger price.
It’s additionally no secret that Vox Media gave the impression to be hemorrhaging employees, with layoffs seemingly occurring each few months – in December 2024; in January, February, Might and August 2025; after which once more in January 2026.
In the meantime, Vox Media targeted lots of its consideration throughout that point on attempting to claw again a number of the income it misplaced from declining Google Search visitors, utilizing ways like growing licensing offers with OpenAI, including new subscription paywalls to seize logged-in audiences and investing extra in video and audio content material. “The Pivot” hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway have been to be compensated $20 million as a part of their contract with Vox, for instance.
(Apparently, Penske Media Company seems to be much less involved in AI licensing offers; in September final yr, the group sued Google for utilizing its content material to create AI summaries.)
In any case, no matter how a lot impression AI will proceed to have on the digital media area, it nonetheless seems like the top of an period for Vox, which was valued as excessive as $1 billion on the top of its energy in 2015.
Within the meantime, though each firms plan to function independently in the intervening time, the additional consolidation of media retailers will definitely have an effect on entrepreneurs as effectively, for higher or worse.
As TheWrap reported when Penske first took over Selection, THR and Deadline – all of which have been as soon as competitor manufacturers that proceed to cowl the identical business – it’s a lot more durable to distinguish and promote audiences throughout a number of overlapping properties, and advertisers find yourself with extra leverage in the event that they threaten to tug their advert {dollars} from a number of manufacturers as a substitute of only one.
However alternatively, the advertisers finally have a lot much less alternative over the place they put these advert {dollars} within the first place, if it’s all going to the identical guardian firm on the high.
Then once more, perhaps the advert {dollars} will merely depart the open net totally and onto what they really feel to be greener pastures – like social media, CTV and AI search, for instance. That’s what received Vox Media into this pickle within the first place, wasn’t it?
