Monday’s news seems to be an admission that Group Nine couldn’t find a company it wanted to buy, or that wanted to be acquired. At the beginning of this year, it had created a blank-check SPAC company - the same mechanism BuzzFeed used to go public and buy Complex. Axios, the newsletter publisher created by veterans from Politico, was in talks with German publisher Axel Springer before that deal fell through.Īnd Group Nine itself wanted to acquire other companies. Wishing doesn’t make it so: The Athletic, the subscription-supported website focused on sports, has been looking for buyers for some time, but can’t find one that will pay the price it wants. And Dotdash, the digital publishing arm owned by Barry Diller’s IAC, just swallowed magazine publisher Meredith and its library of titles, including much of what used to be called Time Inc. Vice Media CEO Nancy Dubuc, who bought Refinery 29 in 2019, has also made it clear that she thinks her industry should consolidate. Two years ago, Vox Media bought New York Magazine, and has been periodically picking up small media companies - last month, for instance, it picked up podcast studio Criminal Productions. The flip side: If we don’t combine, we may not make it.Īnd now the mashups are happening, one way or another.īuzzFeed, for instance, had already acquired HuffPost, the digital publisher Peretti had co-founded before launching his own company he and Group Nine CEO Ben Lerer had previously talked about combining their two companies. The optimistic version of that pitch: Combining equals more reach, more efficiency, more awesomeness. The new deal shows that you don’t have to be public to buy a media company: Vox is private, and so is Group Nine.īut the mechanics of the deal - we can talk about some of those in a minute - are less important than the big picture: Collectively, the men and women who run digital media companies have been talking about combining with each other for some time. The BuzzFeed-Complex deal came as BuzzFeed went public, a move its CEO Jonah Peretti said he wanted to make because it would help him acquire more media companies. That deal announcement, first reported in the Wall Street Journal and then confirmed via a companywide email shortly after, comes days after BuzzFeed finished up buying Complex Networks, the publisher aimed at dudes who like hip-hop and sneakers. That’s the takeaway from Monday’s news that Vox Media - my employer - is close to acquiring Group Nine, the publisher behind outlets like The Dodo and NowThis. And now four digital media companies are turning into two.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |