Vox Media is an American digital media company that operates news and opinion websites and new media channels. Originally founded by left-wing political activists including Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and led by an executive team with deep connections to the Democratic Party, Vox Media has expanded from its original roots in sports blogging into a network that covers news, politics, sports technology, science, culture, video games, real estate, food, and more from a generally left-of-center perspective.

History

The predecessor to Vox Media, SB Nation, was founded in 2003 by left-wing activist and Howard Dean campaign strategist Jerome Armstrong, Democratic activist and “Daily Kos” founder Markos Moulitsas, and sports blogger Tyler Blezinski. ^{1 2}

SB Nation grew by starting or acquiring team-specific blogs in a variety of sports, and in 2008 hired former AOL executive and TMZ celebrity gossip site co-founder Jim Bankoff to run the company, replacing Blezinski. ³ Blezinski would leave Vox Media in 2015. ⁴

In 2011, Vox Media launched The Verge, a technology news site. ⁵ It would go on to add video game news site Polygon in 2012 and acquire the Curbed network of blogs – real estate blog Curbed, restaurant blog Eater and shopping site Racked – in 2013. ⁶⁷ It also acquired the technology industry news site ReCode, founded by former Wall Street Journal technology writers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, in 2015. ⁸

Vox

(Main article: Vox)

In 2014, Vox Media launched the Vox.com news and opinion site led by left-wing writer-activists Ezra Klein (late of the Washington Post and the American Prospect and a reported confidante of officials in the Obama administration⁹) and Matt Yglesias (formerly a writer for the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s blog ThinkProgress¹⁰, along with former Washington Post platform director Melissa Bell. ¹¹

Vox is best known for “explainer” articles from a left-wing perspective that purports to give readers all they need to know about a topic. These can range from pop culture (“Jeopardy champion James Holzhauer’s phenomenal winning streak, explained”), to economics (“Why is art so expensive?”), to partisan politics (“Trump’s bizarre Rose Garden news conference on impeachment, explained”), to complex sociopolitical topics (“Abortion in America, explained in 10 facts”).

While the “explainers” are supposed to serve as a formally non-partisan credible information, conservative¹² and liberal observers alike¹³ have criticized Vox for bias and making simple factual errors. Observers also noted the site’s close relationship with the Obama administration, with observers characterizing its coverage of the President and administration policy as “extended commercials for the Obama-in-2016 campaign”¹⁴ and “a disinformation campaign launched by a propaganda ministry.” ¹⁵

Business Units

As of June 2019, Vox Media operates the following websites and business units:

• Vox (General news and opinion)
• The Verge (Technology, science and modern lifestyle news, reviews and opinion)
• SB Nation (Sports blogs, news and opinion)
• Eater (Food and restaurant news and opinion)
• Polygon (Video game news and reviews)
• Curbed (Real estate, architecture and urban planning news and opinion)
• ReCode (Technology industry news and opinion)
• Epic Media (Digital “true story” magazine)
• Chorus (Content management and advertising systems)
• Coral (Website comment section software)
• Concert (Advertising network)
• Vox Creative (Branded content)

Vox Media has expanded heavily into podcasts and video, producing more than 100 podcasts and operating a video production unit that is developing shows for Netflix, CNN, YouTube, Apple, Hulu, and other platforms. ^{16 17}

Leadership

Many members of Vox Media’s leadership team have served formal roles in explicitly left-of-center advocacy and Democratic administrations and political campaigns. Former Clinton administration official Marty Moe is Vox Media’s president, and its chief operating officer is Trei Brundrett, who led digital strategy for the 2008 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia). ¹⁸¹⁹ The company’s chief communications officer, Meredith Webster, served in White House and State Department roles in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. ²⁰

Vox Media’s chief financial officer is Steve Swad, a former Clinton administration Securities and Exchange Commission staffer who went on to become executive vice president and chief financial officer for the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae. ²¹

Actor, liberal activist, and technology investor Ashton Kutcher, who campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, is a formal advisor to Vox Media. ^{22 23}

Investors

The largest investor in Vox Media is Comcast, which invested early in Vox’s life-cycle through its Comcast Ventures venture capital subsidiary and then again in 2015 through its NBCUniversal subsidiary, taking an additional $200 million stake. ^{24 25}

Other major institutional investors include Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures, and General Atlantic. Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm founded and run by Sun Microsystems cofounder and Democratic Party donor Vinod Khosla. ^{26 27 28} General Atlantic is a for-profit private equity firm that shares leadership with the left-of-center Atlantic Philanthropies collection of private foundations. ²⁹

Controversies

SB Nation Writer Compensation

Vox Media’s SBNation.com operates largely as a collection of hundreds of team-specific blogs covering a wide variety of sports. In 2017, Deadspin reported that Vox Media paid the editors and writers behind SB Nation’s blogs as little as $600 per month as independent contractors while holding them to requirements for near-constant writing, social media activity, and reader engagement. ³⁰ The story included a link to a Vox Media memo saying that “writer contributors will be asked to sign new contracts specifying that they will only get paid if they reach their target number of posts.” ³¹

The former manager of SB Nation’s Colorado Avalanche blog sued Vox Media in September 2017, alleging that these management and compensation arrangements for its SB Nation blog editors and writers violated federal labor laws. ³² In March 2019, a federal judge had granted the suit, which remained unresolved, class-action status. ³³

Donation from Building a Stronger Future

In August 2022, Vox Media’s Future Perfect project received a $200,000 grant from Building a Stronger Future, the family foundation of cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, intended for a future media project in 2023 that would report on “technological and innovation bottlenecks that hamper human progress.” ³⁴ In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried announced his resignation as CEO of cryptocurrency company FTX, which had filled for bankruptcy that same month after concerns about fraud and the mishandling of customer deposits led millions of customers to withdraw their assets at the same time. FTX’s collapse drained an estimated $1 trillion from crypto-currency markets, and many customers were left unable to withdraw their savings from FTX accounts. ³⁵ In December 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas after criminal charges were filed by prosecutors for the Southern District of New York. Charges included eight counts of fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and violations of campaign finance laws. ³⁶ As of January 2023, Future Perfect’s media project is on hold ³⁷ and a Vox Media spokesperson claims that the company intends to return most of the grant amount. According to the spokesperson, “$14,000 of the funds was suspended” prior to Sam Bankman-Fried’s resignation and that “if and when a restitution fund is created, Future Perfect intends to turn over the balance to that fund.” ³⁹

Polygon Identity Politics

Beginning in 2014, a faction of video gaming enthusiasts criticized a number of video game-focused media outlets, among them Vox Media’s Polygon, for an excessive focus on identity politics issues such as sexuality, race, and politics in video games. ⁴⁰ In an October 2014 column responding to criticisms of Polygon, editor Christopher Grant confirmed that the site unapologetically covers video games from a left-wing cultural perspective: ⁴¹

If you truly believe there’s an army of people who reject “progressive” voices and outlets like Polygon…or who would prefer coverage “just about the games,” then I’d encourage you to start a new site for those readers.

Unionization

In November 2017, editorial employees at Vox Media formed the Vox Media Union under the Writers Guild of America – East, a labor union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. They claimed support from a majority of the represented employees through an unmonitored “card check” process and rejected the company’s request for a transparent election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). ^{42 43 44}

In January 2018, Vox Media leadership backed down and recognized the union without a secret-ballot vote. ^{45 46}

The new union then began its first contract negotiation by demanding “the best contract in digital media,” according to Washington Post media critic (and dues-paying newspaper union member⁴⁷) Erik Wemple. ⁴⁸  The company and its union negotiated for more than a year, with Vox Media leadership arguing that the union’s demands would put the company’s long-term viability at risk: In one memo to employees, Vox Media CEO James Bankoff wrote, “While paying people a lot more than market wages sounds great on the surface, it’s not realistic or smart.” ⁴⁹

Eventually, on June 6, 2019, Vox Media Union employees went on strike and “took their sites dark” to pressure the company into meeting their negotiating demands. ⁵⁰ Among other editorial implications, SB Nation’s basketball editor Mike Prada threatened that the site’s NBA writers wouldn’t cover the ongoing NBA Finals unless a contract were agreed. ⁵¹ A contract was ratified by union members the next day. ⁵²

In addition to provisions regarding compensation beginning at $53,000/year for full-time employees, benefits and other compensation terms, the Vox Media Union members also negotiated clauses that commit Vox Media to manage itself in conformity with left-of-center social causes. ⁵³ These included requirements that the company interview specified percentages of job applicants “from underrepresented backgrounds,” that it “honor preferred gender pronouns and provide access to gender-neutral bathrooms” and that it provide the union with a $50,000 annual budget for a committee “devoted to improving diversity and equity at the company.” ⁵⁴

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37. Darcy, Oliver. “Returning SBF’s Money.” CNN Reliable Sources, December 19, 2022. Accessed January 5, 2023. https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1671502106062d66b10184982/raw?utm_term=1671502106062d66b10184982&utm_source=cnn_Reliable+Sources+-+December+16%2C+2022&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=o2u2345ARj5Dy3I28OiTWJNB7N4Y3NN0WTPHak4nUD99ttIY4QkryE8xmp08k9Io&bt_ts=1671502106065
39. Darcy, Oliver. “Returning SBF’s Money.” CNN Reliable Sources, December 19, 2022. Accessed January 5, 2023. https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1671502106062d66b10184982/raw?utm_term=1671502106062d66b10184982&utm_source=cnn_Reliable+Sources+-+December+16%2C+2022&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=o2u2345ARj5Dy3I28OiTWJNB7N4Y3NN0WTPHak4nUD99ttIY4QkryE8xmp08k9Io&bt_ts=1671502106065[/note] Along with Vox Media, other online publications that received donations from Building a Stronger Future include Propublica, Semafor, and The Intercept. ³⁸ Cockburn. “ProPublica to return SBF cash — will other outlets follow suit?” The Spectator, December 21, 2022. https://thespectator.com/topic/propublica-return-sbf-cash-semafor-vox-intercept-follow-suit/
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