James Murdoch’s investment firm, Lupa Systems, is in late-stage talks to acquire New York Magazine and the Vox Media podcast network for $300 million or more, according to people familiar with the matter. If completed, the deal would put two influential media properties under the same umbrella as Lupa’s existing investments in the Tribeca Festival and Art Basel.
The timing matters because the reported talks land amid a wave of expensive bets on personality-driven media. Earlier this year, OpenAI paid more than $100 million for TBPN, a daily tech talk show with about $5 million in annual revenue. Paramount Skydance later bought The Free Press for roughly $150 million in late 2025 and named Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, while Joe Rogan renewed with Spotify at a reported $250 million.
Those deals are part of a wider market where podcasts, newsletters and talk formats are being priced less like side projects and more like media franchises. Alex Cooper moved her $60 million Spotify deal to SiriusXM at a reported $125 million. Pat McAfee licensed his daily show to at a reported $85 million. The Kelce brothers signed with Amazon’s Wondery for a reported $100 million. At the same time, has built a subscription model around creator-led voices such as Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ezra Klein and Michael Barbaro, and moved its podcast back catalog behind a subscription-based paywall in 2024.
The friction in this market is that the old separation between publishing and performance keeps breaking down. Red Seat Ventures built a business around commentators like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly before it was acquired by Fox’s Tubi Media Group in 2025. Ted Sarandos said on a 2025 earnings call that “the lines between podcast and talk shows are getting pretty blurry.” The reported Lupa talks suggest the same logic is now reaching a magazine-and-podcast package tied to a billionaire media name.
If the deal closes at the reported price, it would be another sign that the premium buyers are no longer chasing only old-line newsrooms. They are paying for audiences, personalities and the live-event businesses that can grow around them. For Lupa, that would mean joining the same rush that has pushed creator-led media from the margins to the center of the deal market.
