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Vox Media Acquires Re/code, Debate Over "Peak Tech Journalism" Ensues

This article is more than 8 years old.

Minutes after I arrived here in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., for the Code Conference on Tuesday, someone sidled up to me with a rumor: Re/code was being acquired by digital media pioneer Vox. The news was to be announced in a couple of hours at the opening of the conference, I was told.

It didn't hold that long. Revere Digital, the parent company of the Re/code blog and the Code Conference, said it is being acquired by Vox Media.

In a blog post, Re/code co-founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher said that Re/code would maintain editorial independence and would continue to publish under its own name and with its own leadership. The pair said they will continue hosting  the Code Conference. They added:

Re/code will benefit from joining Vox Media by integrating Vox Media’s various capabilities — including marketing, communications, audience development, sales and production. We will also eventually migrate to Vox Media’s beautiful, powerful and flexible proprietary publishing platform, which will give us new ways to present our stories to you.

The deal underscores the current frenzy around digital media, especially among outlets covering the tech boom. Re/code was founded just 18 months ago, when Swisher and Mossberg split from the News Corp ., which published the site's predecessor, AllThingsD. While Re/code is well respected for its scoops and insights into the tech world and the Code Conference is one of the top events in the tech industry, the company is said to have struggled to draw significant traffic and revenue.

Another longtime tech blog, GigaOm, shut down recently, because of financial problems, while others are being sustained more by investors than by revenue.

Interestingly, Vox owns one of Re/code's main competitors, The Verge. Swisher and Mossberg downplayed the competition saying the two sites would work together on some occasions:

We plan as well to collaborate where appropriate with Vox Media’s current and very successful tech news site, The Verge. While the two sites occasionally overlap, we have focused on the business of tech, while The Verge has focused on covering tech from a lifestyle perspective.

Speaking on stage at Code, Jim Bankoff, the CEO of Vox Media, reiterated the promise of editorial independence for Re/code and the Code Conference. "It's not going to change," he said. "It's going to get better."

People close to the deal say Vox approached Re/code several weeks ago. The company already operates a network of sites including the popular sports site SB Nation, The Verge and Vox.com, which focuses on politics and is led by Ezra Klein. While Re/code's traffic is significantly smaller than the Verge's (1.5 million unique visitors a month compared to 12 million for Vox, according to Comscore), the site is known for its incisive and insightful take on the tech world and will help beef up Vox's presence in Silicon Valley.

But the crown jewel of Revere Digital is the Code Conference, which attracts some of the biggest names in tech. Over the years at Code and its predecessor AllThingsD, Swisher and Mossberg have interviewed the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Larry Ellison and other tech luminaries. People close to Vox say it has eyed the Code Conference with envy for some time and knew it would extremely difficult to build a comparable event. It now plans to expand the franchise, which already includes a number of smaller conferences.

For Mossberg and Swisher, the deal marks the end of their journey as independent entrepreneurs. While Re/code is successful and highly respected journalistically, the site had a relatively small audience and faced ever increasing competition from established media companies as well as newcomers like BuzzFeed. Competing in such environment, not doubt, became increasingly difficult, especially as the display advertising business has continued to deteriorate for most online publishers. Becoming part of Vox will likely give it the resources -- in marketing, technology and publishing know-how, for example -- to grow its reach and influence.

But the deal also suggests that the investor fueled frenzy around tech journalism is likely not sustainable. The tech industry is awash with new-media sites that cover it, including Mashable, Pando Daily, Venture Beat, Business Insider, ReadWrite and The Information, to name just a few of the best known ones. They are all fighting for eyeballs and ad dollars, not only with each other, but also with a slew of major national business and news publications (including FORBES) that have ramped up their coverage of tech.

The last time there was a similar "boom" in tech journalism, at the peak of the dot-com bubble, it quickly turned to bust when the bubble burst. Precisely when the current don't-call-it-bubble will reach its peak and start deflating no one knows. But it is a hot topic of conversation at the Code Conference and everywhere from Silicon Valley to New York.

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