Publisher, Vox Media
Melissa Bell is Publisher of Vox Media and a co-founder of the Vox news website. Before that, she was Director of Platforms at The Washington Post.
Melissa Bell is Publisher of Vox Media and a co-founder of the Vox news website. Before that, she was Director of Platforms at The Washington Post. Founded in 2014, Vox is a news hub run by Vox Media (Not to be confused with Vox German TV channel). Co-founded by former Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein who is also an editor. Melissa Bell is the vice president of growth and analytics, and former Slate Columnist Matthew Yglesias is editor and a columnist for Vox.
Quotes
We are taking a diversified approach to our business model and I think that every organization no matter how big or small needs to think about that diverse approach. We make a large percentage of our money off different advertising models, so we have three or four different types of advertising that fill in that bucket. Everything from this incredible growth that we’ve seen across our podcasts over the last year — I think we’ve grown like 300 percent over the last year from the podcast base — to we’ve built out a really strong programmatic advertising technology called Concert that we’ve partnered with other organizations and that’s allowed us to really create a targeted solution for major ad campaigns. We work in sort of editorial sponsorships and in the branded content space as well so sort of high-touch, high-end advertising campaigns. We have an in-house ad agency. So that’s one bucket that has about four or five different approaches within that. We also have a new business line that we started about three years ago where we’re starting to develop licensing off our IP so it’s what we call our Vox Media Studio Business and that’s developing podcasts internally or externally with partners taking some of our really talented video work and developing shows around that. So we now have six television shows in production. ... We also licensed our technology platform called Chorus, which is a publishing platform and we built a staff business around that. … We just launched our first membership program with our Vox video YouTube team, which is very fun.
One of the things that I know I don’t get right all the time is that I’m not hearing from the people who are coming up with the next crazy idea because we sit far apart from each other, they’re hard at work on their day-to-day and so I try to think about opportunities for us to try to come together and share ideas across different groups and make sure that those conversations are happening pretty regularly so the company can invest in those ideas and they don’t get lost sort of in the system.
I think one thing that I see often times is that a lot of organizations feel that they have to own every solution, either they're spending a ton of money on their own CMS (content management system) or they are hiring people to do very specific tasks, and I think there are a lot of free tools and capabilities out there on the web that sometimes I think organizations don't necessarily take that step to do a more low-fi version of something and then spend their money and energy on the thing that sets them apart from everyone else.
I think that the biggest danger or tendency that we have in our industry is to look for simple solutions, like everyone should do podcasts or everyone should pivot to memberships or everyone should do X, Y or Z. And I don’t think that there’s any single answer. I think that it’s always a mixture of what’s the best opportunity for the audience that you’re trying to target with the capabilities that you currently have.
Vox Background:
Who owns them?
Vox is owned by Vox Media and was founded by Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias. (Vox, para 3, 2018).
How many are owned by the same parent company?
This is a different owner from the other sources.
Are any owned by independent sources?
Vox Media is an independent source that owns several other smaller companies including Vox.com (Moses, para 3, 2017). The owners all appear to be independent sources although records of their affiliations are not public.
What is their annual revenue?
After a 200 million dollar invenstment from NBC Universal they were able to increase their revenue to 100 million in 2017 (Moses, para 1, 2017).
Where do they get their revenue from?
Vox makes in money in three different ways. The first is that they work directly with advertisors to put their products next to the content (Stetler, para 9, 2014). They also, back in their earlier years relied heavily on investements (Stetler, para 16, 2014). And the third source of revenue is Vox’s publishing platform Chorus which earns money because it received good press when it launched (Stelter, para 18, 2014).
What’s their reader/viewer share?
The average about 800 million views per month. That number is including video shares on other websites (Moses, para 3, 2017). Those are the most recent numbers and it will be unclear if they are increasing or decreased currently until the end of 2018.
Is there a particular story that “made” this news venue particular popular?
There isn’t a particular story that I could find however Vox is kwown for being an “explanatory” type of Journalism (Bercovici, para 1, 2014). That basically means they explain things to their readers, which for some readers could be a really positive thing if they are having trouble figuring out messy situations themselves.
Was there a story that this news venue is particular well known for scooping?
Melissa Bell Vox Bio
If there is a story about this, it’s very hard to find.
How does the news site frame itself?
This site is left leaning and it doesn’t hesitate to frame itself as such. From looking at the home page you can see an entire section dedicated to their “explainers” where they post their explanatory journalism. They present themselves with the color yellow which can be very cheery. They put ads at the top of their page and sometimes to the sides of articles and the home page.
How is it perceived (conservative/liberal/moderate/completely unreliable/well-respected for fairness/etc)?
Most people would argue that Vox is a liberal leaning news source but that for the most part it presents reliable information. However others would say that it is extremely left-wing bordering on propaganda (Cosman, para 1 2014).
Vox: March 25th 2018
Retrieved at 12:50pm
Total points: 82
Total points possible: 152
Grade: 53.9%
Vox: March 26th 2018
Retrieved at 9:21pm
Total points: 60
Total points possible: 152
Grade: 38.8%
Vox: March 27th 2018
Retrieved: 5:52pm
Total points: 53
Total points possible: 152
Grade: 34.8%
Vox Overall Score: 42.5%
Analysis:
Of the three sources Vox is the most strongly liberal. They lacked diversity in their sources because of this. They struggled to present things in a conservative light at all. Not to mention that sometimes their sources where unnamed which led to a loss of points and lack of credibility on their part.
Not only that but on their main page they presented less than 10 stories. As an internet source that’s an interesting choice because readers very rarely look at anything else when they are browsing through their internet new. After their few best stories it turned to their explainatory journalism.
Melissa Bell Vox Media
Explanatory journalism is one of the things that actually makes Vox popular among readers. We as a society don’t like to go looking for things, we want them and we want them perfectly explained. However this can lead to some problems for people who get all of their information from a biased source such as Vox. Reading one of their “such and such…explained,” articles and believing it all to be true and factual could lead to a lot of misinformed readers.