Twitter cofounder Ev Williams may expand his media interests next year, with an eye on New York magazine.
This isn’t Williams' first foray into media; he is also the founder-CEO of publishing platform Medium.
Williams’ interest in New York was first reported by Bloomberg. He is said to have talked with Pam Wasserstein, CEO of the magazine's parent company, New York Media. However, there has been no word on the status of the discussion.
In August, an internal email from Wasserstein reported by CNBC revealed she was open to an acquisition.
In November, New York Media rolled out a dynamic metered paywall across all of its sites, including nymag.com and its standalone verticals Vulture, the Cut, Intelligencer, the Strategist and Grub Street.
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New York joins a growing number of publishers erecting paywalls to expand consumer-driven revenue and lessen reliance on advertising.
Earlier this month, New York staffers moved to unionize, complaining of “increasing corporate pressures” and “stagnant wages and benefits.”
Williams isn’t the first tech billionaire to invest in legacy publishers. Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff and wife Lynne recently bought Time magazine from Meredith Corp. for $190 million in cash. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos acquired The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, bought majority ownership of The Atlantic last year through her firm, Emerson Collective LLC. (Emerson Collective also recently acquired Pop-Up Magazine Productions, the publisher of live magazine show Pop-Up Magazine and The California Sunday Magazine.)