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Whenever I’m asked to describe the business and culture at Vox Media I’ll sometimes pause a beat because there are two interrelated answers to this question: the ultra-condensed version and the laundry list version which is actually a series of qualities and values that make up the ultra-condensed version. The ultra-condensed version is we’re a digital media company that empowers smart web talent with smart technology to create a premium, intelligent content offering that reaches massive audiences.
The laundry list version is a bit more comprehensive and I like this version best because it actually describes who we are rather than what we are. Our CEO Jim Bankoff recently summed it up best: we’re "media hackers" in that we’ve created a newsroom that unites journalism culture with hacker culture; we’re a company that values and encourages collaboration, experimentation and nimbleness, being data-informed rather than data-driven, avoiding preciousness at all costs, and embracing transparency.
we’re "media hackers"
That last quality, transparency, is a really important one, especially for the Vox Media Marketing and Communications department. Our department has an overarching goal: make Vox Media — our company, media brands, talent across all departments, content, et al. — impossible to ignore. Without inter-organizational openness and transparency this goal would be impossible.
We also encourage a level of transparency beyond the walls of Vox Media; our product team has been a big proponent of this and so we took a cue from them and started a blog that shares the intelligence and insights our team gathers in the pursuit to be impossible to ignore. Here you’ll find case studies, instructionals, Q&As, anecdotes spun from trial and error, guest posts from really smart people in the industry, musings, and other things that we think are worth sharing.
Our very first post takes a look at some of the ways the Vox.com and audience dev team approaches publishing for the content behaviors of social audiences, with a special focus on Facebook.