Vox Media


Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company founded in Washington, D.C. with operational headquarters in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in November, 2011 by CEO Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass SB Nation and The Verge. Bankoff had been the CEO for SB Nation since 2009.
Vox Media owns numerous editorial brands, most prominently New York, The Verge, Vox, SB Nation, and Eater. New York further incorporates the websites Intelligencer, The Cut, Vulture, The Strategist, Curbed, and Grub Street. Recode was integrated into Vox, while Racked was shut down. Vox Media's brands are built on Concert, a marketplace for advertising, and WordPress.
The company's lines of business include Concert, Vox Creative, Vox Entertainment, Vox Media Studios, and the Vox Media Podcast Network. the company operated additional offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, and London. In June 2010, the network featured over 300 sites with over 400 paid writers. Comscore ranks Vox Media 35th-most popular media company among users from the United States.

History

Background in sports media

, a freelance writer, established Athletics Nation in 2003 as a sports blog that sought to cover the baseball team Oakland Athletics from a fan's perspective. The blog quickly became popular, becoming the second-most popular site on the Blogads network, after Daily Kos. Bleszinski, together with Daily Kos creator Markos Moulitsas and political strategist Jerome Armstrong, then established the sports blog network SB Nation around Athletics Nation in 2005. The popularity of the site led to other sports blogs being incorporated. SB Nation hired former AOL executive Jim Bankoff as an advisor in 2008 to assist in its growth. He was promoted to chief executive officer in January 2009. He showed interest in SB Nations goal of building a network of niche-oriented sports websites. By February 2009, the SB Nation network contained 185 blogs, and in November 2010, Comscore estimated that the site had attracted 5.8 million unique visitors. The 208% increase in unique visitors over November 2009 made SB Nation the fastest-growing sports website the company tracked at the time.

Continued growth and expansion into other content areas

In 2011, Bankoff hired a number of former writers from AOL's technology blog Engadget, including former editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, to build a new technology-oriented website in the same network as SB Nation. These writers had originally left AOL following a series of conflicts between Topolsky and Michael Arrington, the author of TechCrunch, and the leak of an internal training document that outlined a content strategy for AOL's blogs that prioritized profitability. Bankoff felt that a technology-oriented website would complement SB Nation due to their overlapping demographics. The Verge was launched on November 1, 2011, with Topolsky as editor-in-chief. Alongside this launch, Bankoff and Trei Brundrett created Vox Media as the parent company for both SB Nation and The Verge. The previous parent shell to SB Nation, SportsBlogs, Inc., was converted into Vox Media, Inc. for this purpose. Brundrett, who had been with SB Nation since 2006, became Vox Media's vice president of products and technology, and later chief product officer.
In 2012, Vox Media launched a video gaming website, Polygon, led by former Joystiq editor Christopher Grant. In November 2013, Vox Media acquired Curbed Network, which consisted of the real-estate blog network Curbed, the food blog Eater, and the fashion blog Racked.
In April 2014, the company launched a news website, Vox. Led by former Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias, Vox was positioned as a general interest news service with a focus on providing additional context to recurring subjects within its articles.
In May 2015, Vox Media acquired Recode, a technology industry news website that was founded by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, the former editors of The Wall Street Journals All Things Digital. In February 2017, Vox Media promoted Brundrett as its chief operating officer. In May 2017, Vox Media announced that it had entered into an agreement to provide technology and advertising sales for Bill Simmons' sports website The Ringer, as part of a revenue sharing agreement.
In February 2018, it was reported that Vox Media would be laying off around 50 employees, particularly surrounding video production. CEO Jim Bankoff stated previously that the company planned to exit native video for Facebook due to "unreliable monetization and promotion". The memo announcing the layoffs argued that despite its success, native video "won't be viable audience or revenue growth drivers for us relative to other investments we are making", and that the company wanted to focus more on podcasting and Vox Entertainment. The layoffs represented around 5% of Vox's workforce.
In April 2019, Vox Media acquired Epic magazine, which would become part of a new division called Vox Media Studios, which had also absorbed Vox Entertainment and the Vox Media Podcast Network. In September 2019, Vox Media agreed to acquire and merge with New York Media, the parent company of New York magazine.
The California Assembly Bill 5 was passed in September 2019, and the bill aimed at improving the working conditions for contract workers. In response to this bill, Vox Media announced in December 2019 that it would terminate more than 200 contracts of California-based freelance writers for SB Nation, and replace these writers with 20 full-time staff writers.
On April 17, 2020, Vox Media announced it would furlough 9% of its workforce from May 1 to July 31, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In January 2021, Lindsay Peoples Wagner was hired to be the new editor-in-chief of The Cut. At the same time, Vox Media also banned fossil fuel advertising to tackle climate change. In February 2021, Swati Sharma—former managing editor of The Atlantic—was hired to be the new editor-in-chief of Vox. Vox Media purchased Cafe Studios, the publisher of Preet Bharara's podcast Stay Tuned with Preet, in April 2021, making it part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
In August 2021, Vox Media announced its purchase of Punch, a mixology website established by Bertelsmann-owned Random House, to undisclosed terms. Punch is to assist the expansion of Vox Media's Eater website.
On December 13, 2021, it was announced that Vox Media would acquire Group Nine Media. The acquisition was completed on February 22, 2022. Investors in Group Nine, including Warner Bros. Discovery, now own 25 percent of Vox. In February 2023, Penske Media Corporation became the largest shareholder in Vox Media, acquiring a 20% stake in the company, and Jay Penske joined Vox's board.
In April 2023, it was announced that NowThis would be spun off as a separate company from Vox Media. The deal was backed by Accelerate Change.
In May 2025, Vox Media sold Polygon to Valnet, while also laying off most of their staff including Editor-in-Chief Christopher Plante. Aftermath reported they were informed by a "former employee" that "at least 25 people have been let go" and noted many of the laid off staff "were union members". The Vox Media Union was negotiating a new contract with Vox Media at the time, and the Writers Guild of America East condemned the sale as union busting. Group Publisher for Polygon & The Verge Chris Grant shared his frustrations on Bluesky, stating that Valnet had refused to meet with him or answer questions during the process.

Corporate affairs

Funding

In December 2014, Vox Media raised a round led by the growth equity firm General Atlantic, estimating the media company's value at around. Participants in Vox Media's previous rounds include Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, and Khosla Ventures. Other funders are Allen & Company, Providence Equity Partners, and various angel investors, including Ted Leonsis, Dan Rosensweig, Jeff Weiner, and Brent Jones. According to sources, the Series C in May 2012, valued Vox Media at $140 million. A Series D valued the company north of, raising an additional.
In August 2015, NBCUniversal made a investment in Vox Media, valuing the company at more than. Comcast, which owns NBCU, additionally already owned 14% of Vox through other subsidiaries.

Union

In January 2018, Vox Media agreed to recognize a labor union, the Vox Media Union, which had been formed by its editorial staff with help from the Writers Guild of America, East. On June 6, 2019, more than 300 employees under the Vox Media Union staged a walkout over failed labor agreements between the union and Vox Media, leading to most Vox Media websites temporarily ceasing operation.
The Vox Media Union negotiated with management during the widespread furloughs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. The union "won a guarantee of no layoffs, no additional furloughs, and no additional pay cuts through July 31, along with enhanced severance for any layoffs that occur in August–December." Staffers at New York Magazine are represented by a separate union, under Newsguild.

Litigation

In September 2017, Vox Media was sued by Cheryl Bradley, a former manager of the "Mile High Hockey" site for SB Nation, which covered the Colorado Avalanche team. The suit alleged that Vox Media had only paid Bradley a $125 stipend per month, despite her being an employee of the company working 30–40 hours a week, and had therefore failed to reach obligatory wage and hour protections. Fellow former site managers John Wakefield and Maija Varda were later added to the suit as plaintiffs, and Vox Media unsuccessfully tried to have the case dismissed. The suit was granted class action status by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2019.
A second labor suit was filed as a class action lawsuit in California in September 2018, citing the Fair Labor Standards Act. Because this lawsuit could have covered 258 plaintiffs and damages of up to, Vox Media had the suit moved to the United States federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act.
In several cases, plaintiffs represented by the attorney Richard Liebowitz sued Vox Media over copyright infringement claims.