The Digital Media Era Is Definitively Dead

Last month, veteran media reporter Dylan Byers reported in Puck that Vox Media was being disassembled and sold off. The collection of brands Vox had accumulated over the years includes SB Nation, New York magazine, Eater, and the Vox Podcast Network. It’s unclear what’s going to happen to any of these sites, or the people who work for them — last year Vox sold video games site Polygon to something called Valnet, which immediately laid off most of Polygon’s staff. Byers speculated that Jay Penske, the media mogul who owns Rolling Stone and part of Vox, could buy some of the brands; supermodel Karlie Kloss might take the Cut, the acclaimed women’s interest vertical from New York. It’s truly an exciting time to be working in media, when the value of some of these pretty well-known media brands is probably less than the cost of a private jet.