Vox Media acquires Cafe Studios, the podcast-focused publisher co-founded by former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. Cafe Studios is Vox Media’s fourth recent merger or acquisition. It has picked up film, television, audio and production studio Epic and commenting platform Coral, as well as merging with the publisher of New York magazine. Bharara and Tamara Sepper, who serves as the executive producer and head of content, will join Vox Media along with a team of podcast hosts, producers and product developers. Cafe will operate as a division of the Vox Media Podcast Network, continuing to produce its active slate of shows, with new shows in development this year. “Bringing Cafe into the Vox Media Podcast Network is aligned with our goal of delivering high-quality editorial content at scale and providing audiences highly relevant voices and insights,” said Vox Media chairman, CEO and co-founder Jim Bankoff.

Alessandra Galloni
Alessandra Galloni

Reuters names Alessandra Galloni editor-in-chief, the first female leader in the company’s 170-year history. Galloni, who has been global managing editor at Reuters since 2015, succeeds Stephen Adler, who is retiring. She will work from the company’s London office. After beginning her career at Reuters’ Italian-language news service, Galloni was a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal for 13 years. She takes the helm as parent corporation Thomson Reuters searches for ways to lower costs and raise revenues. Though Reuters News made $73 million in pretax profits in 2020, it was deemed “a drag on the growth of the company” by Bank of America analyst Gary Bisbee. The division accounted for about 10 percent of Thomson Reuters’ total $5.9 billion in revenues.

Subha Barry
Subha Barry

Bonnier Corp., which publishes magazines including Working Mother, Yachting and Sailing World, launches Seramount, a diversity, equity and inclusion platform. The platform, which currently provides DE&I services to more than 400 corporate brands, is the result of the merger of Working Mother Media, Diversity Best Practices, Culture@Work and the Working Mother Research Institute. It is led by Subha V. Barry, who was previously president of Working Mother Media and has also served as global head of diversity at Merrill Lynch. “By leveraging all of our capabilities, we will help our clients as they lead the way to a new bottom-line driving business priority—to make belonging a baseline at every stakeholder touchpoint,” said Barry.