Vox Media Blog

Official Blog of Vox Media, creators of the next generation of leading media brands: SB Nation, Vox.com, The Verge, Polygon, Racked, Eater, and Curbed.

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Google AMP previewed with publishing partner Vox Media

The latest initiative to improve mobile performance

Today Vox Media joined Google as a publishing partner on Google AMP: the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project that aims to dramatically improve the performance of the open mobile web. Announced this morning in New York City, the new open source initiative allows webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics to work alongside smart ads and to load instantaneously.

“At Vox Media, we want our users to have the best experience possible on whatever device or platform they choose, and we have always believed in benefiting and contributing to open web projects. We’re proud to partner with other media and technology companies to create a standardized approach to web publishing that allows our mobile users the most consistent, fast, accessible, and high-quality experience possible.”—Melissa Bell, VP of Growth and Analytics, Vox Media and Co-Founder, Vox.com

Armed with Google AMP, Vox Media looks forward to better, faster mobile experiences for audiences and advertisers on any phone, tablet or mobile device.

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Vox Media Now Available on Apple News

Announcing a new way to enjoy Vox Media  

Vox Media is excited to launch all of our eight media brands today on Apple News, now available on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch with the iOS 9 upgrade. By making the vast majority of our content available, we look forward to reaching new audiences and our existing readers through our Apple News channels: Vox.com, SB Nation, The Verge, Polygon, Eater, Racked, Curbed, and Re/code.

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Vox.com’s Phil Edwards’ piece about the science behind rigged mechanical claw games saw major international pickup, including The Today Show, Daily Mail UK, Buzzfeed, and many others.

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Vox Media in the News: Week of June 8

Welcome to the weekly roundup of notable coverage of, and announcements from, the world of Vox Media.

Eater announced it's annual list of Young Guns, representing the top up-and-coming talent in the food and beverage industry, and was covered by some of the winner's hometown press.  Eater feted the group with a party and menu of tastings from each of winner at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica.

Apple, at the WWDC, previewed the company's new app -- called News -- which includes content from Vox Media's Vox.com, The Verge, Polygon, SB Nation, Eater, and Racked.  The news was covered widely by business press, including CNN.com, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and more.

Vox.com's Phil Edwards' piece about the science behind rigged mechanical claw games saw major international pickup, including The Today Show, Daily Mail UK, Buzzfeed, and many others.

Digiday wrote about Vox.com's muted-audio video strategy, citing Vox's highly popular two-minute long video about Deflategate, which explains the story with a series of animations, overlaid images — and no voice-over.

Vox.com's engagement editor Allison Rockey spoke at the News Impact Summit in London, which was covered byjournalism.co.uk.

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Vox Media in the News: Week of June 1

Lindsay Nelson named AdAge’s Women to Watch list, Coverage of Vox Media’s acquisition of Re/code continues, Racked launches on Kik and more.

Welcome to the weekly roundup of notable coverage of, and announcements from, the world of Vox Media.

Lindsay Nelson, Vox Media’s global head of brand strategy, was named to AdAge’s Women to Watch list, the publication’s annual round-up of 20 women breaking ground in media and marketing.

Coverage of Vox Media’s acquisition of Re/code continued, with Re/code co-founder Kara Swisher speaking with Business Insider and WBUR’s “Here and Now” about the deal.

Coverage of Vox.com recently launched embeddable card stacks continued, with an in-depth interview with Vox.com’s founders Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell, and Matt Ygelsias in AdAge, expanding on what this new tool means for brands.  Capital NY’s Ken Doctor praised Vox.com’s partnership with McClatchy around embeddable card stacks and their potential to improve newspaper reporting.  

Digiday reported on Racked launching an account on Kik, as the first Vox Media brand to join the social messaging platform.

The Wall Street Journal covered the launch of Hiscox’s latest video campaign, with Vox Creative serving as distribution partner for the new content.

Vox Media’s Product team is nominated for a 2015 Net Award for Team of the Year, going up against product teams from Buzzfeed, Twitter, and the BBC. Vote for Vox Product here!

Vox Media’s Elite Truong has a new column with Poynter, where she’ll discuss bridging developers and journalists, and successes Vox Media has seen in this space.

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Vox Media acquires Re/code

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Jim Bankoff on Vox Media acquiring Re/code. #codecon

Posted by Re/code on Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Today Vox Media announced that Re/code, the technology business news organization founded by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, will join the company.

Re/code will continue to publish at Recode.net and across other platforms. Its coverage areas will complement those of the The Verge, our leading consumer tech lifestyle brand, by focusing particularly on tech business news and analysis.

Re/code’s renowned tech and business conference division will continue to grow, and we will explore ways to apply Re/code’s leadership in this space to our other media brands over time.

Re/code will benefit from Vox Media’s infrastructure and resources, and will eventually move on to Chorus, Vox Media’s proprietary platform. The current members of Re/code’s staff will soon be employees of Vox Media.

Welcome, Kara, Walt, and the Re/code team to Vox Media! 

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Vox Media Hosts First Annual UpFront Presentation

Today Vox Media hosted our first annual UpFront presentation at the Paley Center for Media in New York.  

We unveiled a slate of upcoming original digital video series across several of the Vox Media brands, as well as the launch of Chorus for Advertisers, a new offering to open Chorus, our proprietary storytelling, distribution, and insights platform, to brand partners.  Chorus for Advertisers also launches with a new partnership between Vox Media and global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi, availing Chorus first to DigitasLBi’s clients.

Vox Entertainment, Vox Media’s division of digital video and talent partnerships, unveiled a slate of upcoming new original digital video series to be presented across the seven Vox Media brands, including new series on Vox.com, Eater, Racked, and SB Nation.

Read some early coverage of these announcements in AdAge, The Hollywood Reporter, AdWeek, and Capital NY.

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Vox Media Joins Facebook’s Anthology to Partner on Developing High-Quality Video Content for Advertisers

Today Vox Media announced we have joined Facebook’s Anthology network as an official partner to develop high-quality video content for advertisers.

Anthology is a Facebook Marketing Partner program featuring a select number of the world’s top video content creators, including Vox Media, tapped by Facebook to build original branded content for leading global advertisers. Vox Creative, Vox Media’s internal advertising division, will lead creative development and sponsored content production for our Anthology projects, while Facebook will provide science, scale, and measurement data.  

Vox Media has a wealth of experience working with brands to create smart, effective, and highly successful ad campaigns across all platforms, and Anthology is a unique opportunity to expand our work in this space and help brands reach more of the right audiences on Facebook.

Read more about Anthology here.

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The Verge Reviews Apple Watch

Today, The Verge unveiled a review of the Apple Watch -- an unprecedented 6,000 word multimedia collaboration between The Verge’s editorial, product, design, and video teams, with cameos by editors from fellow Vox Media brands Racked and Eater.

The Verge’s editor in chief Nilay Patel wore the Apple Watch for the last week to do everything from sending messages to tracking his fitness, to buying coffee and ordering an Uber.

Read and watch the full review here.

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Vox Media Welcomes OpBandit

Vox Media is proud to announce that data science startup OpBandit has joined our team.

OpBandit is a digital media-focused technology designed to optimize the presentation and distribution of editorial and advertising content, and to improve social sharing and engagement.

Read the Financial Times’ coverage of Vox Media’s plans for the OpBandit technology here.

Vox Media is integrating the OpBandit technology and algorithms into Chorus, our proprietary storytelling and audience platform as we also add founders Brian Muller and Blaine Sheldon to our Vox Product team.  We have always been a technology-driven media company, and with the addition of OpBandit, we are strengthening our data science capabilities -- in Chorus, across social platforms, and in Vox Creative -- to best serve our audiences and brand partners.  

We’re happy to welcome OpBandit to Vox Media!

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Read the James Beard-Nominated Eater Stories of 2015

Last year, part of Eater’s major push — in addition to the relaunch of the site — involved launching a features program and modernizing professional restaurant criticism for a digital audience. 

Today, Eater received nominations for five James Beard Foundation Awards. These awards, presented annually, recognize excellence in cuisine, culinary writing, and culinary education in the U.S. Chief critic Ryan Sutton was nominated for Distinguished Restaurant Review, and three stories edited by Eater features editor Helen Rosner were nominated for four other journalism awards. 

Read them all below.

Dining and Travel: Eating Well at the End of the Road by Julia O’Malley

Profile: Jeremiah Tower’s Invincible Armor of Pleasure by John Birdsall

Personal Essay and Distinguished Writer Award Life in Chains: Finding Home at Taco Bell by John DeVore

Distinguished Restaurant Review Ryan Sutton 

Once an Icon, Per Se Is Showing Its Age

Six Reasons Why Cosme Is NYC’s Most Relevant Restaurant

Artisanal-Everything Roberta’s Defies the Stereotype

More James Beard coverage from Eater: Seven Charts That Explain the James Beard Awards

Here are the 2015 James Beard Awards Finalists

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Vox Media Launches Vox Entertainment

Vox Media has launched Vox Entertainment - a division of the company that will lead our work developing digital video and talent partnerships within each of the seven Vox Media brands.  Read The Hollywood Reporter's coverage of the announcement here.  

Vox Entertainment is led by Vox Media creative director Chad Mumm out of Los Angeles, and is partnering with the best digital native talents to develop new and dynamic video content.  We are also working with talent agency William Morris Endeavor to develop television and film projects.  

Stay tuned for more partnership announcements from Vox Entertainment in April at the MIP Digital Fronts in Cannes and Digital Content NewFronts in New York.

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Vox Media at SXSWi: The Complete Lineup

Vox Media descends on Austin this week and we’re participating in a series of discussions about what can only be described as the future. The future of sports, food, fashion, media innovation, and even a session with an ominous title that explores how modern media companies are thinking about the role of technology platforms to weather the apocalypse future-proof their businesses. If you’re making it out to SXSW Interactive and attending sessions, we’d like to invite you to join us at ours!

Friday, March 13th New Media Ethics: Journalism in the Age of GIFs 12:30pm - 1:30pm CT @ Hyatt Regency Austin ft. Chris Thorman, Audience Development Director Gameday 2025: What's In Your Living Room? 2pm - 3pm CT @ Four Seasons ft. Spencer Hall, SB Nation Editor-in-Chief Saturday, March 14th What Fashion Can Learn from Female-Led Companies 9:30am - 10:30am CT @ JW Marriott ft. Leslie Price, Racked Editor-in-Chief What's Next for Native Advertising? Presented by Outbrain. 10am CT @ Lambert's (RSVP req.) ft. Lindsay Nelson, VP Vox Creative Creator Activism: A Discussion with Robert Kirkman 11am - 12pm CT @ Austin Convention Center ft. Brian Crecente, Polygon News Editor Sunday, March 15th Booming Media Brands Holding Onto Identity 9:30am - 10:30am CT @ Hyatt Regency Austin ft. Jonathan Hunt, VP Global Marketing The Art and Science of Food Innovation 1:30pm CT @ GE's BBQ Research Center (RSVP req.) ft. Amanda Kludt, Eater Editor-in-Chief Monday, March 16th 72 Ways Food Can Change The World 11am - 12am CT @ Driskill Hotel ft. Amanda Kludt, Eater Editor-in-Chief Food Criticism in the Digital Age 5pm - 6pm CT @ Driskill Hotel ft. Helen Rosner, Eater Features Editor Tuesday, March 17th For Media, It's Platform or Perish 11am - 12pm CT @ Hyatt Regency Austin ft. Trei Brundrett, Chief Product Officer

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Today we are proud to unveil the new, bigger and bolder Racked

Racked is Vox Media’s fashion, shopping, and beauty property, which re-launches today on Chorus, our proprietary storytelling and audience platform. 

Racked debuts a fresh redesign, new logo, and slate of new video series and partnerships, including company’s first scripted video series, an original video collaboration with UK fashion and style magazine Dazed & Confused, and addition of Lo Bosworth to the masthead as Health + Wellness Editor-at-Large and host of an upcoming video series.

Visit the new Racked and read more about the redesign, expanded video content, and editorial coverage from Racked’s Editor in Chief Leslie Price here, and read Women’s Wear Daily’s coverage of the relaunch here. 

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Vox.com interviews President Barack Obama

Vox.com founders Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias had the opportunity to sit down with President Barack Obama for a rare, hour-long video interview, making Vox the first digital-only news site with such access to the President.

The wide-ranging discussion focuses on the President's views on current domestic and foreign policy, a retrospective of his historic presidency, his outlook on the future, and much more. There has truly never been another more comprehensive or timeless interview with President Obama.

The full interview is now on Vox.  Watch it here and enjoy.

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Bill Gates takes over The Verge in February

Nilay Patel, Editor in Chief of The Verge, announced the site's first ever guest editor for the month of February: Bill Gates.

This will be a new type of collaboration for The Verge, but Mr. Gates couldn't be a better fit. Every year, Bill and Melinda Gates publish a letter outlining their philanthropic efforts and the changes they hope to make in the world. This year, that letter is about improving the lives of the poor through technology. 

"The Verge audience is an amazing group that thinks about technology, that knows the rapid progress that’s being made," Gates told Nilay. "We can go far if we get all those great thinkers helping to invent, helping to support, and imagining what’s possible. We feel lucky to get to talk to this audience about what we’re seeing, and sharing that optimism."

Head over to The Verge to read Nilay's announcement, watch he and Gates chat about the collaboration, and learn more about the videos and features coming soon to the site.

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Take a look back at Vox Media's very incredible 2014

2014 was huge year for Vox Media. We grew to seven verticals, added mountains of talent to all our teams, and expanded our audiences in new ways. To share our excitement for all we accomplished last year, we put together a beautiful 2014 year in review.

The stories, numbers, and slick UX are all great, but what really makes this retrospective unique is that it was written by our editors and department heads. We invite you to hear how they all felt 2014 went, in their own words.