Talk about a busy afternoon for tech news junkies!
Vox Media‘s digital media empire, which includes The Verge and Polygon, has acquired news startup Re/code in all-stock deal.
Re/code is best known for its star journalist founders, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, both former Wall Street Journal staffers. Their content primarily focuses on the business of technology, while The Verge tackles B2C news stories.
The Verge wrote about the acquisition on its site, noting how the two tech news sites will begin to work together. “Bringing Recode into the Vox Media fold means that The Verge can remain focused on being the best mainstream technology and lifestyle site in the world, and Recode can dig even deeper into how the money and business of technology works,” the post wrote.
Mossberg and Swisher were quick to assure readers Re/code’s core reporting principles wouldn’t change with the acquisition. “We want to assure you that this combination is designed to bolster and enrich Re/code, and that we will continue to publish under the same name and leadership, with editorial independence,” they wrote in a post late Tuesday.
The New York Times reports Re/code said it had 44 full-time employees and three contract employees. All staff are expected to join Vox, “though Vox would not elaborate on potential staffing changes.”
Welcome back, Gigaom
As if that weren’t enough late afternoon news to shake up the tech journalism industry, along came an announcement about the revival of Gigaom. Certain assets of the news network, which announced its closure three months ago, have been acquired by Austin start-up Knowingly Corp.
As the press release states Knowingly is buying Gigaom’s domain, archive and certain assets. Knowingly also plans to bring back GigaOm in August 2015.
But can Knowingly bring back revenue Gigaom? The news site shut down due to cash-flow problems and plagued by as much as $10 million in debt. But the acquirers are optimistic.
Knowingly CEO Byron Reese describes Gigaom as, “second to none in what it does.” He adds in the release: “We are excited to be a chapter of the Gigaom story and look forward to continuing its mission of ‘humanizing the impact of technology.’”
Mathew Ingram, who wrote for Gigaom before getting a gig at Fortune, cited an unnamed source who claims Knowingly will attempt “to monetize the existing content at the site by making the ‘evergreen’ articles about popular topics easier to find, and then eventually intends to create more content of that nature—not news, but background and context about tech topics.”
Photo via Wikimedia
