Vox hardly seems like the worst home for New York—but in the increasingly punishing modern journalism economy, you can’t blame the New York Media crew for feeling less than immediately sanguine about the sudden ownership change
Still, the timing of the deal raised eyebrows. Last year, New York Media formally explored a sale or strategic partnership, but nothing materialized. More recently, seeing “material growth,” as one source put it, Wasserstein indicated that she had decided to stay the course.
Bankoff first floated the idea to Wasserstein at Vox Media’s Code Conference. This time around, according to someone who knows how it all went down, he was impressed with attributes like early growth in New York Media’s nascent digital-subscription component, strong affiliate revenues for the Strategist, and an uptick in the overall advertising business. “They got their shit together,” the source said.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone is convinced of the sale’s logic. “I don’t get this deal from @NYMag Pam Wasserstein side,”editor in chief of the Wrap. “She has the shiny New York mag and Vulture brands. Why sell for NO CASH? She loses independence, control, links her value to the still-young Vox. Great sales job @Bankoff.”
Great sales job indeed: As a Vox Media source put it, “The positive way to spin it is that Vox is stable enough to do a merger or acquisition like this. It’s not like they’re in crazy growth mode, but they’re stable enough to do that. When Vice buys Refinery, that’s gonna be a lot of fucking bloodbath. But here, they can say, We’re not just buying pageviews. We’re getting something more.”
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