Re/code bought by Vox Media

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF.—The company that owns Re/code, the tech reporting site, as well as the popular tech conference Code, has been purchased by the digital media company Vox Media, which publishes the tech news site The Verge.

The announcement was made Tuesday as the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., got underway.

"We are thrilled to announce that Re/code's parent company, Revere Digital, is being wholly acquired by the highly respected digital-native media company Vox Media," co-founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher said in a statement on the Re/code site.

As the conference began, Mossberg joked that he got a Snapchat from Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer. "Stories are wrong. We got bought by Yahoo. And `you're fired.'"

Swisher piled on: "That's ok, that's fair. Severance from Marissa Mayer would be great."

"In all seriousness we are very excited about what we doing. We're entrepreneurial and we thought this was a great opportunity," she said."

Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff said he went online two hours after tickets to Code went on sale and was just out. "I called up Kara and I said, `Kara I've just missed out. I've been coming every year.' And she can be tough and said, `nope, I'm sorry. You should have come online sooner and paid me earlier. I told her there and then that I was going to find my way into this conference."

After leaving TheWall StreetJournal's All Things Digital, Mossberg and Swisher founded Re/code in 2014. The site quickly went on to win numerous reporting awards.

"This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism," the pair's statement said.

Re/code plans to integrate Vox Media's various capabilities, including marketing, communication, audience development, sales and production, they said.

The focuses of the two news organizations are not in conflict. "While the two sites occasionally overlap, we have focused on the business of tech, while The Verge has focused on covering tech from a lifestyle perspective," Mossberg and Swisher wrote.

Vox Media has multiple news sites, including SB Nation, a sports site; Curbed, a real estate site; Eater, a food site; and Vox, a general interest news site. Through all the sites, Vox Media has about 116 million unique visitors a month. "Our company is really about three things, talent, platform and culture," Bankoff said, adding that Vox Media remains committed to the Code conference business as well as the Re/code website.

Though Code continues to draw big names and well-heeled attendees, Re/code faces competition from several other tech-journalism outfits, including TheWall Street Journal, which has its own conference for tech stars.