the first casualties of Vicefinery & New York Vox Mag

You couldn’t miss news of the two big media mergers from this past week — first, Vox Media merging with New York mag, and as of yesterday, Vice buying Refinery29 — and of course, Twitter had some GREAT jokes (exhibits A and B). 

Naturally, we have soooo many questions: will there be layoffs? Did Vice & Vox really have that kind of money (or should we say moxie) after respectively going through recent layoffs / a whole dang union walkout this year?? Will it be weird for Grub Street and Eater to be under the same company?? And ummmmm Vicefinery is worth how many billions?? 

But while we’re munching the popcorn and eyeing our own respective outlet overlords nervously, we should all pour one out for at least the first clear casualties of these mergers: first, for Racked, the retail site acquired by Vox in 2013 that got folded and rebranded as a different vertical, called “The Goods,” last summer. Will Vox do the same to all those New York media brands they just got, too? Or will they try to merge The Goods with The Strategist to Frankenstein together The One Commerce Site To Rule Them All? In any case, Racked, we hardly knew ye, but know that you were loved.

Secondly, pour one out for Broadly, which was Vice’s “women’s interest” vertical up until last spring, when it got folded into the rest of Vice. We don’t know about you, but if we were Broadly alums, we’d be feeling some FEELINGS about our parent company kinda dumping us and then going out and buying a whole other women’s media outlet...like yeah, she’s cute and has the 29 Rooms thing going on...but it just feels a little ice cold, Nancy. 

(that said...jim & nance...if you’re feelin spendy...you know where to find us.)

note: an earlier version of this newsletter called mistakenly Grub Street “Grubhub.” clearly that is a mistake and also indicative of where our minds are at on a wednesday night at 10 p.m. deez links regrets the error sorry ily guys