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The Wolf of Broad Street

James Murdoch’s acquisition of Vox Media’s prime cuts is now official and the end result is far more favorable than it might have been: Eater, The Verge and other Vox sites will get spun off; Bankoff and Wasserstein will stay on; and New York and the podcast networks get an owner who, thankfully, has something to prove.

james murdoch
This deal has been a long time coming, which has given us ample time to examine James’s investment thesis, as well as the Oedipal dynamics at play for the spurned son of the Rupert family empire. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
May 20, 2026

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On Wednesday morning, James Murdoch announced that he had landed his long-anticipated, $300 million-plus deal to acquire New York, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and Vox.com. The new Vox Media, as it will be called, will be a subsidiary of James’s investment vehicle, Lupa Systems, and will be run by current C.E.O. Jim Bankoff—who, after sticking around long enough to steward these assets to their best-available exit, surely deserves the role. Indeed, his decision to stick around must have made the deal far more palatable.