When Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s least hip men, bought a 5-percent stake in the professionally hip corporation Vice Media last year, the company was valued at an astronomical $1.4 billion. Now the Canadian sex-and-drugs zine–cum–“Time Warner of the street” is reportedly in talks “to sell a major stake in itself” to the actual Time Warner (which today spun off its dead-tree weight known as Time Inc.) at a valuation of about $2.2 billion, according to Sky News. (Financial Times says a deal is close, putting Vice’s value between $2 billion and $3 billion.) The awkward but not outrageous coupling could see Time Warner “injecting HLN … into Vice in return for roughly half the enlarged company,” which means Nancy Grace may soon be sampling bath salts herself. Trippy.
