Business Insights: Global Markets, Strategy & Economic Trends
- James Murdoch is reportedly in talks to acquire major parts of Vox Media.
- He is flush with cash after selling family media assets to Disney and a $3.3 billion settlement.
- A potential purchase of New York magazine would be a symbolic coda to the Murdoch family's earlier ownership.
- Podcasts have been a major growth engine for Vox Media, generating over $80 million in 2025 and hosting Today Explained.
A deal for the company would elevate Mr. Murdoch’s Lupa Systems as a player in U.S. media. The company has a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival, and it has financially backed Bodhi Tree Systems, one of India’s biggest media investors. Quadrivium, the foundation that Mr. Murdoch founded with his wife, Kathryn, has backed The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics, and The Bulwark, a so-called “Never Trump” digital media company.
But in the United States, Mr. Murdoch has not been an owner in the news industry, the business that helped make his father, Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire mogul with global influence. The younger Mr. Murdoch is flush with cash after the sale of parts of his family’s media business to Disney and a $3.3 billion settlement with his family that secured control of the family’s trust, which includes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, in the hands of his father and his brother, Lachlan.
An acquisition of New York magazine would be a coda of sorts for Mr. Murdoch. In 1977, his father bought the magazine’s parent company, which then also owned the Village Voice newspaper, triumphing over a lawsuit filed by its president, Clay Felker. In 1991, Mr. Murdoch sold New York magazine, along with publications including Seventeen and Racing Forum, for $650 million.
The deal would be a major change for Vox Media, one of the last privately owned digital publishing ventures that rose to prominence during the digital media boom of the 2010s. Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s chief executive, grew the company from a sports blog, SB Nation, by cobbling together acquisitions like New York magazine, The Dodo and Recode, the tech site Ms. Swisher co-founded that was an early entrant to podcasting.
It was the podcast business that proved to be one of the major growth engines of Vox Media, even as the digital-media industry became challenged. Podcasts generated more than $80 million for the company in 2025, according to one of the people with knowledge of the deal discussions. The network includes shows like the popular daily news podcast “Today Explained” and hosts like the social researcher Brené Brown.
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