In the coming weeks, I’m told, Vox Media C.E.O. Jim Bankoff is likely to agree to multiple deals to sell various assets of his company, including the Vox Media Podcast Network, New York magazine, and the portfolio of digital brands that includes The Verge, Eater, and SB Nation—a tidy but somewhat anticlimactic end to one of the great media roll-ups of the 2010s. “There’s not one deal, there are deals,” a source familiar with said deals told me. Another source close to the matter suggested that negotiations on all fronts were “positive,” but cautioned that they were still “far from conclusion.”

Jim and the bankers at Aryeh Bourkoff’s LionTree have been shopping the assets since late last year, as Semafor first reported in March. The podcast business, which has been marketed to prospective buyers as TalentCo, could include the podcast network as well as Vox.com, according to a source who has seen the pitch deck. Jim has also positioned the podcast business for this spinoff by establishing separate sales teams and operational structures. (He declined to comment for this story.)

The podcast network, which is financially and creatively anchored by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway and a couple of other hosts, is indeed the most profitable and high-growth part of the business. Sources familiar with the company’s numbers say it did around $60 million in revenue last year and north of $20 million in profit. By contrast, New York did more than $100 million in revenue but drew a profit of around just $6 million. In an appearance on The Grill Room last year, Jim touted podcasts as the company’s central growth engine, declaring it a “more lasting and durable medium … than social or even websites at this stage.”

Still, the podcast business has some notable key-man vulnerabilities. The network includes 40-some shows, but the vast majority of revenue comes from about a half-dozen, including the Pivot podcast and the rest of the Kara–Scott Cinematic Universe. Vox boasts a broad roster of talent that also includes Esther Perel, Brené Brown, Andy Roddick, and, as of this week, Maria Sharapova, but the business itself is really quite dependent on two 60-something thought leaders and a few others. To his credit, Jim locked Kara and Scott into a four-year revenue-share deal that incentivizes performance and will keep them in-house until at least 2029—presumably a prerequisite to any signed term sheet.

And yet the business remains compelling to the right suitors, especially with that attractive EBITDA margin. Late last month, The New York Times reported that Versant, the parent company of MS NOW and CNBC, was “one of multiple suitors” in talks to buy the podcast network. Versant, which already has a stake in Vox Media, is still at the table, I’m told. The company has capital and has been acquisitive in the interest of “diversifying” its cable business. (It recently acquired Free TV Networks and Indy Cinema Group.) The question is whether Versant C.E.O. Mark Lazarus actually wants to pony up nine figures for low-eight-figure EBITDA in order to have a podcast network and bring Kara and Scott into the MS NOW–CNBC universe. Maybe he does.

And who wants New York? Jim and LionTree presumably began that leg of the sales journey at the doorsteps of civically minded, altruistic billionaires and other wealthy individuals who might be tickled by the prospect of owning a storied media brand and confident in their ability to, say, double its revenues. After all, who wouldn’t want the Laurene Jobs option, which sounds infinitely better and cleaner than pursuing a deal with a strategic or a private equity company? If all fails, one imagines, Jay Penske’s media empire already owns 20 percent of the combined business and might tie it into its network of Hollywood trades and Rolling Stone. But that would be an ignoble end to the New York story that Jim would probably rather not countenance.

There’s been some scuttlebutt that Karlie Kloss might be interested in acquiring The Cut, the New York fashion and culture vertical, and adding it to a burgeoning media portfolio that includes i-D, which she bought from Vice in 2023. I couldn’t confirm this with the parties involved, but it’s hard to imagine how they’d extract that vertical from New York without diminishing the value of the larger asset. It’s also unlikely that Bankoff or the guys at LionTree would want to cut this whole thing into ever more pieces, thereby complicating an already complex deal.

In any event, the fate of Vox’s podcast and publishing businesses will be revealed soon enough. And, as one source familiar with the deal talks noted, “If they sell the store, there is no other Vox Media company. I don’t think people realize it’s selling itself for parts.”

Still, one has to commend Jim for sticking around long enough to see the process through. After presumably taking some money off the table when NBCU invested $200 million at a $1 billion valuation in 2015, he had plenty of opportunities to jump ship while Vox was coming down from those heights. Instead, he built out a portfolio of solid mid-market brands, diversified the business, tried and failed to sell, landed the Penske investment, and positioned the assets for their best-possible exit, all things considered.

It’s not the outcome one might have envisioned a decade ago for Vox Media, but it sure beats the fate of its erstwhile contemporaries, which either went bankrupt or were carved up by creditors. And it’s a responsible end to a professional tenure that stands out in stark relief when juxtaposed with some of its peers. At the very least, the highs and the lows will make him a useful board member for companies in and out of media whenever he decides to set up his third act.