Is Vox Media CEO James Bankoff WG'96 a Henry Luce for the Digital
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Is Vox Media CEO James Bankoff WG’96 a Henry Luce for the Digital Age? BY ALYSON KRUEGER 1922, a 24-year old journalist named Henry One person who thinks he’s found a way is James IN Luce quit his job at a Baltimore newspaper to Bankoff WG’96, chair and CEO of Vox Media, Inc. Unlike launch the country’s fi rst weekly newsmagazine. Luce, Bankoff isn’t a kid anymore—at 46, he’s old enough Writing to his future fi rst wife, Lila Hotz, he promised to have witnessed most of the history of the commercial that his new publication would off er “articles on politics, internet, having started his career with AOL in 1996 books, sport, scandal, science, society, and no article during what we now call Web 1.0 (at the time, naming will be longer than 200 words” and that it would “serve internet eras like software versions hadn’t been in- the illiterate upper classes, the busy business man, the vented yet). But similar to the Time, Inc. visionary, tired debutante, to prepare them at least once a week Bankoff has looked around his industry landscape and for a table conversation.” realized something was missing. The market was under- Luce was on to something. Time became a huge success, supplying the kind of targeted, beautiful, smart websites and he used the same model to launch such iconic titles that Bankoff wanted to build. as Fortune, Life, and Sports Illustrated. By the 1960s, “Just as great magazine companies that have multiple Time, Inc. was the county’s largest and most prestigious titles were built in one era, and great cable networks magazine publisher, reaching mass audiences across that have multiple diff erent topics were built in an- America and raking in advertising money. As for its other era,” says Bankoff , “we recognize, OK, the great founder, in the words of his recent biographer, historian digital brands that are focused on big consumer catego- Alan Brinkley, he secured a place in history as “one of ries are going to be created in this era, and we want to the great media visionaries of the twentieth century.” invest accordingly and go for it.” But that was the last century. The revenue model that sustained Luce’s empire and a host of other newspaper PHOTOGRAPH BY DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER and magazine properties is profoundly broken; audi- ences have fragmented and been lured away by other entertainment and information options; and for the modern media-mogul hoping to replicate both Luce’s innovative vision and material success in the 21st cen- tury there is no clear path forward. 36 JULY | AUGUST 2015 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JULY | AUGUST 2015 37 “The Vox Media sites, they feel like mag- el worked,” says D’vorkin. “Now there is in love with the internet because of the azines,” says Joshua Benton, director of the no singular model that guarantees suc- discovery and exploration, but he had Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard Univer- cess, and there are so many diff erent the skill to understand it was also a busi- sity. “They are high production value.” models that people are trying.” ness,” says D’vorkin. In his seven years leading Vox Media, While The Huffi ngton Post is trying to The fi rst time Bankoff surfed the Web Bankoff has launched or acquired such be an internet newspaper, a site like was as a Wharton MBA student, in a com- digital brands as SB Nation, a collection Buzzfeed aims to produce content that is munal computer lab in Vance Hall. of fan sites focusing on diff erent sports shared on social media and goes viral, to Another time he tried to impress the cute and teams; The Verge (technology); Polygon take just two examples. Vox’s approach— girl next door by showing her how to sign (gaming), Eater (food and drinks); Curbed to provide high-quality content to smart, into AOL and pull up a picture of Tom (real estate); Racked (fashion); and Vox (“a affl uent people—hasn’t yet proven itself. Cruise. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever, can general interest news site for the 21st cen- It also faces numerous challenges in you get out of here, please? I have work tury,” edited by the former Washington maintaining and growing its readership to do,’” he remembers. He used his class- Post columnist and blogger Ezra Klein). numbers—and making a profi t. “I’m cer- es to study the tactics of forward-think- In late May it was announced that the com- tainly not hanging up any ‘Mission ing media players like Ted Turner, Rupert pany had acquired Re/Code, a tech site Accomplished’ banners,” says Klein. Murdoch, and Warner Communications started by former Wall Street Journal tech- But then, Time was a chancy proposi- (and later Time Warner) CEO Steve Ross. nology reporters Walt Mossberg and Kara tion when Luce started out, too. “I can When it came time to secure an intern- Swisher after they left the paper in 2013. only say that Vol 1 No 4 will be published,” ship, he set up an informational interview Re/Code continued the AllThingsD website he wrote in March 1923. “And that Vol 1 at a company just entering the public con- and tech-conference business they’d de- No 5 may or may not be published.” sciousness: America Online, Inc. But after veloped for the WSJ and parent company traveling from Philadelphia to the appoint- News Corp, but which, though highly re- Luce, who stayed up nights ment at the company’s Virginia headquar- spected, had never acquired a solid follow- LIKE cutting up The New York ters, he realized he’d come on the wrong ing as a standalone. Times and rearranging the paper into a day. He was walking around, feeling Joining Vox Media may help solve that new format he liked, Bankoff has always gloomy, when he saw a group of men walk- problem. The company currently boasts been an avid student of media. ing towards him on the AOL campus. 400 employees, and claims its sites re- “Not to overanalyze it, but I grew up an “I’m Jim Bankoff , and I’m here for a ceive more than 170 million unique view- only child,” he says. “I had to fi nd ways to job interview,” he said. The lead man ers a month—a number that far exceeds entertain myself, and you can only throw responded, “Well, kid, you have fi ve min- media sites such as The New York Times, a ball against a brick wall and catch it utes. Tell me why I should hire you.” which gets 55 million visitors a month, yourself so many times before you start The man—Ted Leonsis, a senior execu- and Bloomberg News, with 25 million. looking for other forms of entertainment.” tive who would later become a vice-chair- In November Vox Media raised $46.6 So he read books and magazines, watched man of AOL and president of the com- million from General Atlantic, a New television, listened to music, and eventu- pany’s audience group—did hire Bankoff , York investment fi rm, which reportedly ally started wondering how “this stuff who would end up working in a variety put the company’s value at $380 million. was actually made and who made it.” of capacities at AOL for the next tumul- Lewis D’vorkin, who worked with As a senior at Emory University in the tuous decade. During that time the com- Bankoff at AOL and is currently chief early 1990s, he had an internship at CNN. pany experienced explosive growth, technology offi cer of Forbes Media, It was the time of the fi rst Gulf War, and forged its famously ill-fated 2000 merg- praises his former colleague and current a high point for the cable news network er with Time Warner, and struggled to competitor. “I pay very close attention in terms of both audience reach and jour- stay relevant as the era of dial-up con- to what Jim does, and I enjoy and I take nalistic credibility. After that excite- nections gave way to broadband and a the lessons from following [him] that ment, there was no turning back, he says. much more competitive landscape rife apply to me,” he says, adding, “There “I got bit by the bug.” with new and deep-pocketed players. aren’t many Jim Bankoff s out there.” Early stories about the internet were When Bankoff started, most people’s A big part of Vox Media’s appeal comes beginning to appear, and Bankoff remem- experience of the internet—to the extent from Bankoff ’s vision of making the com- bers reading articles about the World that they had any—consisted of dialing pany the next Time, Inc., says Benton. Wide Web in newspapers. Interested, he into portals like AOL, Yahoo, or MSN “It’s an understandable model that is both would cut them out and collect them in a where they would check their email and echoing something that has come before, small binder so he could retrieve the in- then sign off . AOL was starting to think but having the advantage of building formation. “Then, all of a sudden every- about what else people could do once they something from the ground up.” thing was media, and I couldn’t keep up were in their portal. Could they chat with But in today’s complex media environ- anymore,” he says, and he began reading other users? Could they be entertained or ment, such a model is problematic, es- about the internet on the internet.