The last time a Murdoch controlled New York magazine, Ronald Reagan had recently left office, and the phrase "podcast network" would have sounded like something from a science fiction novel about ham radio enthusiasts.
That was Rupert Murdoch, who sold the title in 1991. Now his younger son James is buying it back — or at least half of it — as part of a $300 million deal announced Wednesday that gives him control of roughly half the Vox Media empire, including the storied weekly and its digital verticals like The Cut, Vulture and The Strategist.
The acquisition, made through Mr. Murdoch's investment vehicle Lupa Systems, arrives at a moment when the 53-year-old seems eager to remind people that he, too, is in the media business. His older brother Lachlan runs Fox News, which remains, by any measure, the dominant force in linear cable news. James, who departed the family company in 2020 citing disagreements over editorial content, has been assembling a quieter portfolio. This makes it considerably louder.
What makes the deal unusual is not merely that a Murdoch is now associated with publications that lean leftward — on the day of the announcement, New York's Intelligencer vertical was running analysis with headlines unlikely to appear on Fox — but that Mr. Murdoch appears to be buying two different futures at once.
On one hand, he is acquiring a legacy magazine brand that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence the night before the deal was announced. On the other, he is gaining control of Vox's podcast network, home to popular programs hosted by figures like Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway and Esther Perel — people who built their names elsewhere and now operate as something closer to independent media brands.
A person close to Mr. Murdoch described the pitch to potential talent as straightforward: if you have built a following and want a platform with resources behind it, this is the place to come.
Whether those two strategies — nurturing digital-native solo stars and investing in a nearly 60-year-old print institution — can coexist under one roof remains genuinely unclear. The legacy publishing business faces what might charitably be called headwinds; traffic is falling, algorithms are unfriendly, and artificial intelligence threatens to reorganize how readers encounter journalism entirely. The creator economy, meanwhile, is growing but remains unproven as a foundation for anything resembling a traditional media company.
Mr. Murdoch appears to be wagering that the two worlds are converging — that legacy brands need some of the personal-star energy that podcasters provide, while podcasters need some of the institutional weight that legacy brands still carry. (Or perhaps he simply couldn't resist buying back the family's old magazine.)
The last time a Murdoch owned New York, it was a way station. Five years after selling it, Rupert launched Fox News. Whether James's acquisition represents the beginning of something similarly consequential, or merely an expensive hobby, will depend on questions that no one in media can yet answer.
Original story published in The Hollywood Reporter: "James Murdoch's Blurry Media Bet"