Vox Media Acquiring ReCode

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/business/media/vox-media-acquiring-recode.html?smid=tw-share

by coloneltcb • 11 years ago

178 75 11 years ago

jonknee2• 11 years ago

It seemed so easy when they were at the WSJ... A year and a half later they're trading their business for shares in Vox and a paycheck. Interesting times for media news lately. I'm not sure how Vox is going to work out long term, they're spending VC like it's going out of style.

bananaoomarang• 11 years ago

They do seem to be a little too confident in themselves, though they seem to have the readership (the question is whether they can monetize them quick enough before the 'empire' is too thin on the ground).

L_Rahman• 11 years ago

It'll be interesting to see whether Kara and Walter get absorbed into TheVerge or continue existing as a separate entity. Personally, I hope it's the latter.

callumjones• 11 years ago

By the sounds of announcement on The Verge, Kara and Walt will be remaining at Re/code while also contributing to The Verge.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/26/8662905/the-verge-and-reco...

jonknee2• 11 years ago

I bet they will remain separate and will leave Vox whenever they are contractually allowed to.

wiremine• 11 years ago

I think it goes to show you how important a brand can be. I wonder how much audience they lost moving from the AllThingsD to ReCode brand.

Seems like a good move for Vox to jump on this, too.

taylorbuley4• 11 years ago

Crazily, Allthingsd.com has been seeing traffic rise https://siteanalytics.compete.com/allthingsd.com/#.VWT26mRVh...

Encosia2• 11 years ago

Compete's data is almost totally useless in my experience. Just look at what they show for my site right now (a similar growth pattern): https://siteanalytics.compete.com/encosia.com/

Here's my actual data from Google Analytics over the same period: http://encosia.com/i/encosia-unique-users/

petercooper• 11 years ago

Deals like this, the demise of Gigaom (yes, I know - but it won't work), and the general lack of runaway success of tech publications lately often get people lamenting how media is on a downward slide and the business model inherently broken. I'm starting to suspect, however, that tech media as a mass market idea is grossly overrated.

The typical "person on the street" doesn't care about "tech" as an individual topic, nor for publications like Gigaom, TechCrunch, or ReCode. They'll take tech flavored news in their stream as it comes whatever the source (and folks like the BBC, CNN, the NYT, etc, all do a good job of it anyway).

The people who work in and live and breathe "tech" (e.g. us) and who do really care aren't considered to be "enough" for a mass market site. It's ridiculous a newish site with 1.5 million uniques a month is classified as "struggled to draw significant traffic" in an industry that employs around 6.5 million Americans in all. The "genericization" of tech media as mass market media is horrid - look at how insipid the stories TechCrunch covers nowadays, for example.

I think people need to rework their assumptions about what "tech" is, how it relates to the media as a whole, and to get used to the idea that tech-specific media is (and should be) almost (but not quite) as niche as media aimed at medical professionals, lawyers, people in aviation, or similar groups.

efuquen• 11 years ago

There are so many more demos media start ups can be targeting, but everyone is after the same tech savy millennial demo, it's completely overloaded. You really hit the issue directly, the mass market is much larger and there is a lot more potential new media that could be created targeting them.

comex• 11 years ago

Well, Vox certainly isn't limiting itself to tech. It owns vox.com (politics, with a liberal bias), SB Nation (sports), and Polygon (gaming), among other sites.

rys2• 11 years ago

It's hard to trust the comScore number of 1.5M for Recode's traffic. NYT cite comScore in reporting The Verge is 12M uniques a month, but The Verge themselves confirm it's almost exactly twice that in their own story covering the acquisition:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/26/8662905/the-verge-and-reco...

GoRudy• 11 years ago

comscore is notorious for being off by 50% or more.

necubi• 11 years ago

Quantcast has more accurate metrics for Vox sites (comscore is just guessing, but Quantcast actually gets data from the sites directly).

It reports 81M US visitors/month for the entire Vox network (https://www.quantcast.com/p-d9vfr8QTWnv1E) and 13M for The Verge (https://www.quantcast.com/theverge.com).

That actually lines up pretty closely, so it's likely they were talking about US visitors rather than global (which is ~2x for The Verge).

(Disclaimer: I used to work on Quantcast's measurement product).

wattjustin• 11 years ago

I totally agree and I believe this news is great. Tech media needs consolidation as it's very oversaturated.

Elite Daily is the perfect example of what the millennial generation is looking for. Shallow advice from fellow millennials with tech news sprinkled in with as much importance as think-pieces covering what it's like to be a millennial. Quantcast shows 30 million uniques for Elite Daily last month and that makes me think that it's going to continue to be difficult for tech-centric media to grow and gain sustained advertising dollars. I won't hide my disdain for fluff sites like Elite Daily, but my point is that Elite Daily is what these tech news websites are competing against, not each other.

zf00002• 11 years ago

Personally there is a little bit of fatigue with the overabundance of tech news too. My mom complains that whether it's her little local print paper or Google News, it's always full of fluff articles about whatever stupid shit Apple or Tesla or whoever is up to.

rokhayakebe• 11 years ago

It is not necessarily overrated. If you had a tech blog covering what Facebook, Twitter SnapChat can do for you, or how to get more out of Linkedin, SalesForce, Mailchip, and how they can help you at work, people will read it. It's just that a very few care about the newest round of funding, or the acquisitions.

acdha• 11 years ago

I think you're right, in part because tech has also plateaued for many people. Things like new processors or operating system releases, etc. used to make more of a difference when there were more obvious limitations holding back the average person.

Mac users used to clamor for the latest processor news because there was no computer available which was fast enough; a 7,200 RPM drive had to be a big deal because everyone spent time waiting on their slow 5,400RPM drive. Digital photographers anxiously awaited better sensitivity, lower noise, storage speed, etc. but it's been years since a good phone camera was adequate for most people and even discerning types were more likely to be held back by skill or lenses than their DSLR.Even on HN, I'd bet most readers would take a LONG time to notice if someone secretly their Core i7 with an i5.

manigandham• 11 years ago

Tech audience in absolute numbers has risen but as percentage of population has stayed pretty flat. Yes science and stuff is getting more attention these days but the world of startups and tech bubbles and the same few tech companies isnt what the mainstream really cares about.

The other issue is that millennials, especially technical and gaming are among the highest users of adblock which makes a material impact on ad revenue from the site. Either way, even doubling to 3M uniques per month is still a low number of overall users to sustain a single site.

It might work if part of a larger network, which is what will happen at Vox, but they seem to be hitting the saturation point too. Remember the Verge superbowl ad? It's nice to keep buying traffic and hiring writers as long as the VC money is there but it doesnt seem like they have sustainability figured out yet.

blumkvist2• 11 years ago

I don't know about Vox. I watched the CEO talk at a Re\Code event of all places. He was very dodgy when talking about financials. They are not afraid to spend and have strong backing but I'm not so sure they can make back the mountains of cash they spend.

In any case, it's very interesting to watch how this unfolds.

bootload2• 11 years ago

"I'm starting to suspect, however, that tech media as a mass market idea is grossly overrated."

My thought also. You can test this idea by replacing "tech" with finance, films, radio, farm machinary, mining equipment or any other money making sector of the market.

I often think of meta tech news as "news for tech-industry analysts".

visarga• 11 years ago

Even though there are just 6.5 million people in this industry, there is a lot of interest in technology news from young people and non-tech people of all ages.

danso• 11 years ago

ReCode will become part of Vox’s expanding digital empire, which includes the popular sports site SB Nation, as well as the technology site The Verge. ReCode also will gain access to Vox’s publishing platform, Chorus, which has been a key in luring marquee journalists including Ezra Klein.

Just goes to show how journalists (either the journalists described, or just the NYT author here) are charmed by the mystique of the CMS. I don't care if Chorus is made in Angular 5.0 [1], the robustness of a CMS is not one that makes much difference to the content producers, particularly writing-focused reporters...And the parts that need to be really nice UI/UX (such as slideshow/gallery/quiz creators) aren't necessarily intrinsic to a CMS. A CMS makes a huge deal in ease of publishing...but for most writers, they don't see much difference other than the rich-text editor. It's certainly at the far bottom of reasons to join an organization as a reporter.

[1] it's Rails 3.x IIRC, but perhaps Chorus also encompasses their suite of static publishing tools such as Middleman:

http://product.voxmedia.com/2014/5/29/5759244/vox-media-ruby...

https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/evolution-news-ap...

jakelear• 11 years ago

We're on Rails 4 now for the general "Chorus" codebase (but you're right, we include a number of varied apps under the same umbrella when talking about our platform)

lambdaelite4• 11 years ago

I don't understand the obsession with journalism CMS.

Articles about Vox Media never seem to fail to mention Chorus. As a news consumer, I don't give a crap about how the sausage is made: I want accurate reporting. I find Vox Media, of all the new media groups, to have a most embarrassing level of sloppy and inaccurate reporting. I can't tolerate blatant and lazy errors.

The focus on tools seems misplaced to me. They desperately need a quality system.

brown9-22• 11 years ago

Journalists focus on the tools because so much of the initial Vox PR was about their tools. It's become a part of the established lore, even if it really doesn't make all that much sense.

alexqgb2• 11 years ago

Saying you don't understand journalism's obsession with CMS is like journalists saying they don't understand HN's obsession with programming languages.

"But it's what you do that matters, not how you get it done!"

Yeah, sure.

kramarao• 11 years ago

The focus on the tools in entirely justified. The reason is this:

You really should not be looking at it as a CMS. It is a complete workflow system. In short, these are the systems that the business depends on to write stories, edit stories, publish stories, syndicate stories, promote stories, and so on.

An advantage of a proper system is not merely 10% efficiency: 1. It can impose a process, where none existed before. Perhaps, this can be a quality check process. It can be user feedback process. It can be promotion of journalists process. A process can improve operations and the outcome.

2. It can automate a process. Even if process exists today, if it is not automated, it may not be enforced. We do not have measurement on how well the process is adhered to; who is using it and who is not; what the costs of not using the process are.

3. It can optimize a process. If we can automate and measure, then improvement is natural.

In addition to all these process improvements, something like Chorus can even improve the way it is reaching the customers. For instance, the costs of pushing to different channels is negligible. Their cards based context education system is considered innovative in the industry.

If you look at the existing publishing platforms, you will understand how CMS can change the game. See more about Chorus here: http://pfauth.com/publishing-platforms/vox-medias-chorus . If you want to see the competition that the rest use, see: http://www.ccieurope.com/solutions/NewsGate/ (this is the new version-- think about the previous version and then you can understand the excitement about Chorus).

smcnally• 11 years ago

Many of the people involved are doing more than rich text editing. They're curating and packaging stories. They're promoting these packages within and outside of their site. They're enriching stories with images and meta data. Sometimes there are editing and approval workflows. It's not all as simple as it seems.

When you've got a bunch of specialists, integrating the pieces is the challenge. Usually, you've got people responsible for broad swaths of the process: journos learning marketing; marketers learning copy editing; editors learning SEO. The CMS is where a lot of this gets created, integrated, and published.

govindkabra31• 11 years ago

Wouldn't high-quality-CMS be important to bring down the cost of publishing-- to the point of determining the sustainability of the publication itself?

The established media companies are struggling, if I had to describe in one line, because contemporary revenues cannot sustain their traditional cost structure.

You would otherwise need staff to coordinate between photographer, and onsite attendee and social media curator finding tweets to go with that story, and generally different parts being curated by different team members.

You also want to optimize the "review" workflow, to maximize the page views by landing the story quickly vs. other publications.

nl• 11 years ago

So maybe the best CMS in the world saves you 10% in costs over an averagely competent CMS.

It's not really a material difference in terms of sustainability.

You are correct in stating that established media companies are struggling because of their cost structures. But those cost structures are mostly salaries (and capital investments in buildings etc) rather than something that a magic CMS can fix.

Put it like this: when a "new media journalist" uses their mobile phone to take a picture for their story (instead of a staff photographer) that has made a bigger difference in terms of cost structure than the worlds-best CMS can make.

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

A low friction, high power CMS is hard to do - I maintain from time to time our in house and it will probably get lowest possible scores on any usability ranking.

Considering what Vox.com has turned into lately - not sure that mentioning Ezra is good thing. The old Wonkblog was classes above that crap.

DigitalSea• 11 years ago

Seems the tech blog industry is not doing so well. First Gigaom shuts down and ReCode gets acquired by Vox Media. I think Vox are definitely the right buyers of the site though, they seem to have a decent track record and their current properties like TheVerge are doing quite well all things considering. As long as they keep Walt and Kara on with ReCode, the site will continue as normal.

presty• 11 years ago

official recode announcement http://recode.net/2015/05/26/a-note-to-our-readers/

robzz1• 11 years ago

I wonder how successful recode was because they seemed to be competing with the WSJ market along with review tecg market while being so pro apple all the time site

thewhizkid• 11 years ago

I wonder if there's any correlation between the tech saviness of their reader base and use of Adblock?

sharkweek• 11 years ago

The site receives 1.5 million regular monthly visitors

I have a friend who runs his own blog about movies, pulls about 1.5-1.7M monthly uniques. He has two writers and himself cranking on this thing. For comparison Recode apparently has 44 employees, that's REALLY expensive. I understand they have events and likely a higher opportunity for monetization with their credibility but the math simply doesn't add up no matter how you slice it on that one.

xux2• 11 years ago

Just curious, how do they distribute their content so widely with just three people?

caseyf7• 11 years ago

I doubt it would've mattered. The quality of the ads on Re/Code was very low. It didn't even look like they were selling their own ads - mostly remnants and retargeting. They reportedly made most of their money from events.

37prime• 11 years ago

Mixed Feelings about this. It would be acceptable as long as ReCode retains its editorial independence from Vox Media.

lloydde2• 11 years ago

I'm interested in what this means for the tech ReCode uses. ReCode staff have deep expertise in WordPress and at least historically employed top WordPress development talent.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic CEO, wrote about AllThingsD when it first launched, "All Things D is a fantastic new WordPress MU powered site that I think is a really good example of what the platform can do." http://ma.tt/2007/04/allthingsd-on-wp/

thedz• 11 years ago

In the short term, not much

brown9-22• 11 years ago

Readers aren't coming to the site because of the technology that powers it.

lloydde2• 11 years ago

Of course not, but the reader experience is influenced by the CMS. And the promise of related posts is still unfulfilled. Instead most of the news sites compromise themselves with outbrain.

jordanthoms• 11 years ago

I would have been happy about this a year ago, but the Verge has really been going downhill recently - clickbait, poor articles, less of the awesome long form features they used to do etc. Probably part of the reason Topolsky left if it is due to pressure from Vox. Hopefully ReCode doesn't go the same way.

pyrophane• 11 years ago

Yes, my first thought as well. The Verge has gotten downright terrible of late. So much of the content on the site now is either pop culture click bait or PR fluff pieces for tech companies. Other than the reviews, which are still decent but don't offer much that I can't get on any other tech reviews website, I can find very little reason to go there.

tyleregeto• 11 years ago

On the other hand, Polygon has been knocking it out of the park lately. Examples:

http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/6/8285529/looking-glass-histor...

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/5/21/8627231/the-first-...

The day-to-day Polygon "news" doesn't interest me much, but their "features" have been excellent.

JamesBaxter• 11 years ago

I've had to stop reading Polygon whilst the Features can be good there's so much clickbait and non gaming news.

I understand they need more traffic but if I want film reviews I'll go to a film website I don't understand why they think their game reviews are equipped to discuss things they don't know much about.

MBCook• 11 years ago

No kidding. Today's piece (nearly unreadable in all lower case) was an article complaining that the Apple Watch wasn't good because when you dictate to it for text messages it... dares to punctuate and capitalize.

Yeah.

jkestner2• 11 years ago

I added Ars Technica to my feed since I've always enjoyed their more in-depth pieces and civil liberties beat. Ended up dropping The Verge after I'd see them both cover the exactly same general tech stories I cared about, and Ars without the Spotify playlist and Marvel Universe posts.

Says something about Ars' business model, that a hoary old site seems to sustain itself with some throwback non-native ads and subscriptions, while the Huffington Posts of tech journalism have to sustain growth beyond their audience and crisp initial point of view, into something mushy and barely palatable.

rob_lh• 11 years ago

I've done the exact same thing for the exact same reasons. Hurray for social validation.

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

I've only been involved in one story that was widely covered by the tech press. ArsTechnica's coverage was far and away the most accurate. I've preferred them as a news source ever since.

They might not be the flashiest, highest-profile tech news site, but maybe that is part of their advantage--less clickbait and more actual reporting.

Their coverage of modern password cracking was also top-notch and, with the "correct horse battery staple" XKCD, changed the way a lot of people think about strong passwords.

lambdaelite4• 11 years ago

Ars seems to be the least objectionable of the available tech website choices, but I worry that their decline is just happening at a slower rate. For IT, civil liberties, and biomedical/physical sciences (I would argue their original areas of expertise), they're as good as ever. As soon as they start branching out from those areas, quality as I perceive it takes a nosedive. Take their "Cars Technica" automotive venture as an example. It should be a fertile topic area, but the execution at Ars has been a disaster: look at their Porsche Macan article [0] (an especially bad one) or their Audi A8 article [1]. If you're brave enough to read the comments on either, you'll find plenty of dissatisfied readers and a staff deaf to the complaints—if that is representative of the site as a whole, I see a decline across the site as inevitable.

I would like to be very wrong.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/a-day-in-the-new-porsche...

[1] http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/hands-on-with-audis-flag...

mortenjorck• 11 years ago

In my opinion, Peak Verge was December 2013, culminating in their "Wow this is doge" piece (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/31/5248762/doge-meme-rescue-...). It was the perfect expression of what The Verge aspired to be: an exclusive, well-researched mid-long-form on a pop-culture phenomenon. It was interesting, insightful, fun, and something probably only Vox Media could have done – I can't quite imagine another organization with both the desire and the resources to realize a story like that.

Alas, that was something of a perfect storm for The Verge, and these days most of their content that isn't aggregation seems to consist of fairly vapid, Gawker-esque "thinkpieces" and "hot takes" designed only to drive readers to the comment section.

brianstorms• 11 years ago

Face it, Re/Code's main selling point is its conferences. I bet Vox values them (and the names that run them) more than the Re/Code site.

To me, Re/Code and AllThingsD were not about tech, they were about money. Who has it, who just spent it, who just made it, who just lost it. The "D" in AllThingsD was to me not "digital" but "dollar."

It would be interesting to learn if the Re/Code folks got along with their owners (CNBC?) or if that was a clash, and one party wanted out.

davidu• 11 years ago

Since nobody else is saying it: Congratulations.

Re/Code was a startup. They built it into a thing someone else wanted, and they sold it. That's hard work.

Congratulations and best of luck carrying the torch at Vox.

bootload2• 11 years ago

"But as traditional news organizations and upstarts alike descended on Silicon Valley, ReCode found itself somewhat lost in the crowd. “Everybody is bigger than us,”"

Maturing market. Is the market for meta technology news (ie: the business behind technology) that big? Will it support lots of niche news outlets?

Vox Media Acquiring ReCode

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