
Vox Media Acquiring ReCode - coloneltcb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/business/media/vox-media-acquiring-recode.html?smid=tw-share
======
petercooper
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.

~~~
rys
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...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/26/8662905/the-verge-and-recode-are-
joining-forces)

~~~
necubi
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](https://www.quantcast.com/p-d9vfr8QTWnv1E))
and 13M for The Verge
([https://www.quantcast.com/theverge.com](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).

~~~
theg2
Given that Google is reporting 2.5+ million a month uniques (Chartbeat agrees)
for us and Quantcast has us at 380k, I'm a little skeptical.

Honestly I expected higher for The Verge but then again I'm an Ars guy myself.

~~~
blumkvist
Some publishers chose to put Quantcast's tracking pixel on their websites.
These are annotated as as "directly measured". Vox Media is one of those
publishers. If you don't chose to share your data with Quantcast, they measure
it through toolbars and 3rd party data, so it's only a bad estimation.

~~~
_up
Around 25-30% block Ads and probably also tracking pixel, in the US and Europe
. I suspect the numbers are probably twice that high on tech news sites. So
this alone could probably explain the low estimates.

------
danso
> _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...](http://product.voxmedia.com/2014/5/29/5759244/vox-media-ruby-rails-
upgrade-chorus)

[https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/evolution-news-
ap...](https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/evolution-news-apps-teams/)

~~~
lambdaelite
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.

~~~
alexqgb
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.

~~~
lambdaelite
That's accurate. I think the obsession with programming languages on HN is
also misplaced. Choice of programming language is far from the most important
aspect of the SDLC, as I see things.

I'm admittedly an atypical HN reader.

~~~
gone35
For me it's worse: all I see are constant overheads between trivial prefix-
free equivalents...

But then I also love C and hate everything Python with a passion, so go
figure.

------
jordanthoms
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.

~~~
jkestner
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.

~~~
lambdaelite
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...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/a-day-in-the-new-porsche-
macan-an-suv-that-wants-to-race/)

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/hands-on-with-audis-
flag...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/hands-on-with-audis-flagships-
the-technology-packed-a8-and-s8/)

~~~
jkestner
I don't get the car reviews on tech sites. Clearly they're not "all things
automotive" \- it seems to be mostly Tesla, tech implications and these
sporadic reviews of nice cars that make me wonder if they're really marketing.

------
brianstorms
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
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.

------
lloydde
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/](http://ma.tt/2007/04/allthingsd-on-
wp/)

~~~
brown9-2
Readers aren't coming to the site because of the technology that powers it.

~~~
lloydde
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.

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

~~~
sharkweek
>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.

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

------
DigitalSea
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.

------
L_Rahman
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
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...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/26/8662905/the-verge-and-recode-are-
joining-forces)

------
presty
official recode announcement [http://recode.net/2015/05/26/a-note-to-our-
readers/](http://recode.net/2015/05/26/a-note-to-our-readers/)

------
bootload
_" 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?

------
37prime
Mixed Feelings about this. It would be acceptable as long as ReCode retains
its editorial independence from Vox Media.

------
jonknee
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
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).

------
wiremine
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.

~~~
taylorbuley
Crazily, Allthingsd.com has been seeing traffic rise
[https://siteanalytics.compete.com/allthingsd.com/#.VWT26mRVh...](https://siteanalytics.compete.com/allthingsd.com/#.VWT26mRVhHx)

~~~
Encosia
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/](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/](http://encosia.com/i/encosia-
unique-users/)

~~~
taylorbuley
Compete uses an ISP-level packet-inspection appliance, I believe, and this
shoulder-surfing is to me more buyable than a panel-based approach. Similar
problems with a small sample size, but not subject to as many biases as self-
reported data.

~~~
Encosia
I understand how Compete works. I'm just showing you one immediate example of
how comically wrong their data often is, both in absolute value and in
misreporting trends. This has always been my experience with their data on
both small and large sites, _unless_ you use their paid product that allows
you to self-report. Kind of reminiscent of BBB/DUNs/Yelp type protection
rackets actually.

------
robzz1
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

