When someone mentions the Murdochs, you think of two things. First you think of Succession, because creator Jesse Armstrong was so enamored of the family’s dynamics he wrote a screenplay called Murdoch first. And you think of conservative politics, because the Fox News that now dominates linear television came to pass thanks to Rupert Murdoch, as we know from history and 14 different limited series.

Both ideas reared their heads with the news Wednesday that James Murdoch would pay some $300 million to control half of the Vox Media empire, including New York magazine. The move enlarged the younger Murdoch son’s portfolio — hardly to the level of Lachlan’s remit of Fox News (what is?) but at least so that we were now talking about James’ media play in the same paragraph as his older brother.

And it associated a Murdoch — for the first time in perhaps nearly four decades — with a media outlet that leans left. As James was announcing his purchase, New York vertical Intelligencer was publishing an analysis piece headlined “Trump’s Self-Absorption Spells Midterms Disaster for the GOP,” a phrase one could scarcely imagine chyron-ing across the bottom of Fox News. (Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, also has a stake in Vox Media as part of a 2023 deal announced by current Vox CEO Jim Bankoff and PMC owner Jay Penske.)

Both those strands seize the imagination, and anyone interested in Genesis-level power dramas between younger and older brothers will be bug-eyedly eating popcorn as the real-life version of this unfolds, if with a modern political sheen; Jacob and Esau never ran dueling articles about voter redistricting.

Yet an even more important media point may have slipped under the watch-screen. Because almost as crucial as how James was trying to claw back against his brother was which weapon he was using to do so.

Sitting at the center of the purchase are Vox podcasts, highly popular (and profitable) talkfests from personalities who made their name at other institutions/in other fields before becoming solo stars of this new digital-podcast world — folks like Esther Perel, Sean Rameswaram and Kara Swisher-Scott Galloway. A better gallery of this new creator economy you won’t find (at least the new creator economy as imagined by powerbrokers in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles).

What’s more, James Murdoch has explicitly told his deputies that this is an area he’d like to develop, attracting as many legacy-media refugees as he can — then giving them money and support as part of his new network and reaping the returns. “If you’ve created your brand and have a big following, James wants you to come here and be part of this platform,” is how a source close to him described the pitch to me when we spoke Wednesday.

I heard this and thought “well that is an intriguing proposition.” The past few years have brought a massive and often successful outflux from legacy brands — whether anchor-desk staples like Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Megyn Kelly and Jim Acosta; trenchant above-the-fray commenter-reporters like Oliver Darcy and Isaac Saul; and, surely soon, network fixtures like Stephen Colbert and other late-night absconders. It was only a matter of time before someone not named Substack came along to nurture and house them. Whether that someone can turn it into a fruitful business — providing these personalities with enough aggregative support to make their join worthwhile but not so much they’re back at a legacy brand — remains to be seen. But more of these exits will follow, and ingathering them is not a crazy gamble for an aspiring mogul in 2020’s-media to take.

Yet of course those aren’t the only properties James Murdoch is buying. The 53-year-old and his Lupa Systems are also scooping up New York magazine, one of the most potent text-driven titles out there. At nearly 60 years old, the place has gone through its ups and downs, but the past quarter-century have been mostly ups, aided by those verticals like Strategist, The Cut and Vulture and the journalistic powerhousing at the umbrella brand. On Tuesday night, hours before Murdoch would announce the acquisition, New York received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. I’m not sure it gets more legacy. Yet James is also buying that title with the same stroke of the pen as he’s making his influencer play.

Nor will he be passive about it. James Murdoch will operate New York, not groom it for a sale, and in the short term with probably a good dose of investment, following the pattern that (at least initially) has accompanied billionaire acquisitions of legacy outlets from The Atlantic to The Washington Post.

This creator play and this legacy play seem to fit together … uneasily. Reading about what he’s trying to do with both the next Kara Swisher and the old New York magazine simultaneously, you might be tempted to say, “um, pick a lane?” Or, “what kind of media company are you trying to be exactly?”

The media-creator and podcast business is ascendant and seemingly endlessly durable. While the legacy business, it will hardly come as news to you, is in deep trouble. The brands don’t resonate, traffic doesn’t grow (it plunges), people don’t read/watch and AI bots are about to synthesize and remix the consumption of this content, never mind the production. Like many brands online, The Cut and Vulture are seeing significant double-digit drops on Comscore many months, which means subscription packages need to scale up — fast.

Murdoch has been seeking to win skeptics behind the scenes by citing his skillset from his time supercharging the satellite service Star in India back in the early 2000’s. Not unpersuasive, though whether attracting viewers in Asia to pay for Hollywood movies is the same as convincing Americans to consume journalism remains to be seen.

But it’s here that I think Murdoch is rolling the dice in a way that few other would-be moguls are doing: He’s betting that you can somehow combine the legacy and the creator in a way that will rub off on both of them — that will, in essence, give some of the solo-superstar vibes to a legacy venue that has always been about the title first, but also give some of the gravitas and OG appeal (and decades of solid business) to the upstarts. The closest analogue might be YouTube, which at the recently concluded upfronts started converging these worlds in a way we’ve never seen before: An uber-creator like Alex Cooper was out there promoting what were really basic-cable unscripted shows circa 2016, while a person who dominated basic cable circa 2016, Trevor Noah, was there making the move to creator content.

“You’re starting to see big legacy brands move toward creators and creators move toward big legacy content, and soon they’ll meet in the middle,” Noah told me at a YouTube event, and as James Murdoch’s strategy came into focus Wednesday, that prediction (made a week ago) seemed especially on-point.

Will this work? No one has any idea. Both sides are actually in for some trouble — legacy brands obviously because of the gale-forces of plummeting traffic and trust-busting algorithms but also the one-off stars as AI bots threaten to remix how we consume them, in some cases ensuring that their work filters to us without them nabbing any views at all. I’m not sure combining these sides makes for a wise strategy any more than pouring day-old milk into questionable cereal makes for a better breakfast. But I do think at a media moment when these worlds seem to be coming together, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to be in on both of them and see which way the convergence leans. (Underscoring the strategy: Murdoch left the digital brands not known primarily for personalities, like Eater and The Verge.)

The last time a Murdoch controlled a liberalish publication came when Rupert owned — wait for it — New York magazine, a 15-year tenure that ended in 1991. That was five years before he swooped in with the single-most important media creation of our time with the launch of Fox News.

Lachlan Murdoch now pilots that jumbo jet with plenty of clear skies. His younger brother has just pulled up, hoping he can get a new-model Embraer off the ground.