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?
Effectively, the opposite shoe – err, sale – has dropped, additional affecting future alternatives for advertisers and journalists alike.
On Thursday, Penske Media Company introduced it is going to be buying the opposite half of Vox Media’s property. Affected manufacturers embody 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 biggest stake within the enterprise at 20%.
Both method, the deal makes PMC the biggest digital writer on this planet, in line with the corporate’s personal press launch. The corporate already owns an enormous rolodex of manufacturers that embody Selection, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to a number of occasions and award exhibits just like the Golden Globes.
All of PMC’s writer manufacturers shall be folded into a brand new subsidiary known 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 12 months, as Semafor and Axios each reported, the corporate had already been serious about 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 increased value.
It’s additionally no secret that Vox Media seemed 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 loads of its consideration throughout that point on making an attempt to claw again a few of the income it misplaced from declining Google Search site visitors, utilizing ways like creating 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 had been to be compensated $20 million as a part of their contract with Vox, for instance.
(Curiously, Penske Media Company seems to be much less occupied with AI licensing offers; in September final 12 months, 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 appears like the tip 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 shops 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 had been as soon as competitor manufacturers that proceed to cowl the identical trade – it’s a lot tougher 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 an alternative of only one.
However alternatively, the advertisers finally have a lot much less selection over the place they put these advert {dollars} within the first place, if it’s all going to the identical mother or father firm on the prime.
Then once more, possibly the advert {dollars} will merely depart the open internet 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?
