Corporate Citizenship Our responsibility as the leading modern media company
Our responsibility as the leading modern media company
We are Vox Media, the leader in modern media. We drive essential conversations that touch every aspect of life, culture, and technology. Our storied past and passion for progress lead us to discover what’s now, what’s next, and what’s possible.
Beyond our editorial is a commitment to corporate citizenship – a belief that it is our responsibility to build a better media industry. Creating a company culture defined by constant work toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. Raising standards around what it means to create a safe online ecosystem. Inventing and sharing new publishing technologies and storytelling tools. Giving back to the communities in which we live and work. And remaining inclusive, respectful, and ambitious, upholding our Vox Media values.
It’s from this mindset – action-oriented, optimistic, and always learning – that we hope to improve our company and the industries and communities that we serve.
1. We support the next generation of media leaders
Our industry needs more of the voices who were historically excluded from newsrooms, advertising, and technology, in order to best connect with and serve our audiences. Alongside supporting our people, we aspire to reach, support, and mentor new and emerging voices.
- A measurable commitment to change: Accountability to making progress toward Vox Media’s own diversity, equity, and inclusion goals by publishing our DE&I pillars and demographic information as well as partnering with third-party experts.
- Established mentorship programs: Programs that elevate, train, or mentor talent historically underrepresented in media, including the Vox Media Fellowship Program, Vox Media Writers Workshop, and Breaking Media with the media agency UM.
- Relationships with industry and trade organizations: Bring new ideas and notable speakers to events hosted by organizations such as the Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, and National Association of Hispanic Journalists, along with industry events hosted by Vox Media’s nine Employee Resource Groups.
2. We invent advertising and publishing technologies that also do good
Effectively serving the media industry, from local newsrooms to multinational brands, requires inventing technologies and creating better advertising practices that are flexible, inclusive, and meet the needs of our audiences, clients, and partners.
- An ad marketplace that gives back: Supporting local news and communities of color through the Concert advertising marketplace, including a collaboration with BOMESI that allows brands to directly support a collection of Black-owned media companies with consistent revenue streams.
- Sustainable industry solutions: Providing carbon-neutral advertising solutions that offset carbon emissions within our ad marketplace, Concert, strengthening collaborations with influential figures on green initiatives, no longer accepting ad dollars from fossil-fuel companies or those that support them, and proudly supporting industry organizations such as AdNetZero and Scope3 that drive change.
- Safe online conversations: Promoting our own platforms, such as the Coral community tool as well as joining partnerships, such as the Coalition Against Online Violence, that create a productive, safe space while supporting journalists if they are harassed online.
- Values-driven practices: Alongside ad content policies that restrict companies from spreading false information or promoting violence, tools like Forte, which offer data protection for our audiences, strive to help brand partners more responsibility and effectively share their messages.
3. We give, via our services and our voices
With a broad reach across audiences and platforms, through our pro bono work and strong partnerships, Vox Media lends support to the communities we serve on the issues that impact our employees and audiences most.
- Pro bono creative ad services: Pro bono creative advertising services for partners, with a dedicated fund of $3.5M over two years in support of racial equity campaigns.
- Partnerships for good: Pairing our editorial brands with brand partners to spotlight and support organizations and communities in need. Our strategic partnerships have contributed to the Global Citizen, NAACP, Innocence Project, Urban Justice Center, Stand Up to Cancer, World Central Kitchen and DC Central Kitchen, and New York City programs that, through City Harvest, fed over 250,000 NYC children. Through these partnerships we support the ESG efforts of other companies in addition to our own.
- Open source guidelines and best practices: Elevating newsroom standards of reporting on topics including race, gender identity, sexuality, and disability – and their intersectionality – with internal editorial guidelines shared with newsrooms across the industry through Language, Please (funded by Google News Initiative).
- Volunteering: Programs inclusive of volunteering legal support to initiatives such as the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline through the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.
There will be no moment when this work is complete. Rather, these efforts are ongoing ways to make our Vox Media voice heard, turn our values into actions, and commit to strong corporate citizenship.
About Vox Media’s Corporate Citizenship
Vox Media’s corporate citizenship is built on the belief that, as the leading modern media company, it is our responsibility to build a better media industry.
At Vox Media we are committed to building and sustaining a company and an industry that is diverse, inclusive, and supportive for our people and our audiences. As a community of journalists and storytellers, business professionals, creators and technologists, we believe it is a moral and business imperative to amplify voices, share our best practices, and give back to our industry and the communities we live and work in.
The creativity and ambition to do this work has come from every division and from people at every level of the company, with the initiative launched and led by Vox Media’s Communications & Public Affairs team.