Vice, Decayed Digital Colossus, Files for Bankruptcy (nytimes.com) 44
Vice Media has filed for bankruptcy, "punctuating a yearslong descent from a new-media darling to a cautionary tale of the problems facing the digital publishing industry," writes Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin via the New York Times. The media company was once valued at $5.7 billion back in 2017. From the report: The bankruptcy will not interrupt daily operations for Vice's businesses, which in addition to its flagship website include the ad agency Virtue, the Pulse Films division and Refinery29, a women-focused site acquired by Vice in 2019. A group of Vice's lenders, including Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management, is in the leading position to acquire the company out of bankruptcy. The group has submitted a bid of $225 million, which would be covered by its existing loans to the company. It would also take over "significant liabilities" from Vice after any deal closes. A sale process follows next. The lenders have secured a $20 million loan to continue operating Vice and then, if a better bid does not emerge, the group that includes Fortress and Soros will acquire Vice.
Investments from media titans like Disney and shrewd financial investors like TPG, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars, will be rendered worthless by the bankruptcy, cementing Vice's status among the most notable bad bets in the media industry. Like some of its peers in the digital-media industry, including BuzzFeed and Vox Media, Vice and its investors bet big on the rising power of social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, anticipating they would deliver a tide of young, upwardly mobile readers that advertisers craved. Though readers came by the millions, new media companies had trouble wringing profits from them, and the bulk of digital ad dollars went to the major tech platforms.
Investments from media titans like Disney and shrewd financial investors like TPG, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars, will be rendered worthless by the bankruptcy, cementing Vice's status among the most notable bad bets in the media industry. Like some of its peers in the digital-media industry, including BuzzFeed and Vox Media, Vice and its investors bet big on the rising power of social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, anticipating they would deliver a tide of young, upwardly mobile readers that advertisers craved. Though readers came by the millions, new media companies had trouble wringing profits from them, and the bulk of digital ad dollars went to the major tech platforms.
Millions you say (Score:2)
Though readers came by the millions...
Did they though? Vice, as with all the "new media" companies, has official Twitter accounts. When they tweet, engagement is astonishingly low. You could claim that people are just clicking through instead of responding on Twitter, but in an age of "read the headline then rush to post your unbelievably valuable hot take", is that likely? I don't think so. I especially don't think so because Vice leaned into clickbait headlines just as hard as they could, attempting to elicit exactly that response. I do
Re:Millions you say (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some bean counter axed the expensive journalism and quality content that attracted an audience in the first place in favor of naval gazing millennials they could get for cheap who could crank out quizzes, top ten lists, and other things that could be spammed on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe it worked for a while or pumped the numbers for a quarter, but it's pretty obvious how it worked out in the longer term.
Re: (Score:2)
They had dangerously poor editorial standards and completely failed to deal with mistakes when they were made.
One Chinese woman was outed by Vice and then had a visit from the police, who took her away in a van. She specifically agreed with them, in writing, not to mention certain things in the article, which Vice then published details of anyway.
For all the good they did, the lack of editorial oversight or accountability was a huge problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, do not fuck with Naomi Wu. That woman is amazing [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:3)
...the bulk of digital ad dollars went to the major tech platforms.
Yes. The ones with actual users. What a surprise.
When speaking about platforms in the business of selling little more than "online activity" as The Product, I'd love for them to define what an "actual" user is.
How long before corporations are warping sales numbers and bullshitting stock prices based on what bots are "buying"...
Re: (Score:2)
The ones with actual users ...
These are the sort of self-generating monopolies I've seen in the past 25 years of the internet.
Effectively, everyone goes there because everyone goes there.
A bit more than herd mentality, but makes any startup something which requires large amounts of energy to succeed and then keep going. Never stop.
Twitter has self-inflicted wounds, thanks Elon, but continues to limp along. I find myself less likely to visit because -- not everyone is there any more.
Re: (Score:2)
Effectively, everyone goes there because everyone goes there.
Not herd mentality. It's called the network effect, and it's the reason there was only one voice telephone network across the entire planet. It's far less useful if there's more than one disconnected network. Likewise for the Internet. It is the Internet, despite the idiots at the New York Times not understanding that fact. It's only useful as it is because all the world's packet-switched networks are interconnected. The so-called social media sites are subject to precisely the same pressure.
Two thoughts: (Score:2)
1) Vice Who?
2) Please stop putting links to the fucking paywalled NYT as the primary link. I swear they must be one of Slashdot's only remaining paying customers.
10 reasons why they failed, coming up (Score:5, Funny)
And number 4 will BLOW YOUR MIND!
Re:10 reasons why they failed, coming up (Score:5, Funny)
And number 4 will BLOW YOUR MIND!
"Make your company go bankrupt with One Neat Trick"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey now (Score:2)
Remember when Vice owned Slashdot?
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, so I was only 75% right...
How appropriate (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Back when I still watched him (Score:5, Interesting)
Tim Pool used to tell stories about his time at Vice and how it was staffed by 20somethings who would work for
mid-20k salaries (in NYC) just for the bragging rights of saying they were working for the new hotness in NYC.
I am not surprised that an outlet like that can't break even if their talent doesn't pass the laugh test to the eternal question about any media: what is uniquely informative about your content, what *wisdom* do you bring to the party that I should I consume your output to inform/entertain/improve/indulge myself?
A bunch of tattooed kids might bring something interesting, but more likely they'll just act and write like a bunch of tattooed kids.
For those in the audiency under the age of 35, tattoos and earings for men used to be considered transgressive, and often transgressive for the sake of being transgressive sans any actual depth.
Re:Back when I still watched him (Score:4)
Personally, I think earrings look gaudy on both men and women, but I generally think that of most jewelry, including watches. It's people trying to signal wealth or social standing and it's become mass market to the point that it's empty symbolism. They've become as hollow as tattoos, but for a different reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I think earrings look gaudy on both men and women, but I generally think that of most jewelry, including watches. It's people trying to signal wealth or social standing and it's become mass market to the point that it's empty symbolism.
I had seven piercings in my left ear (and one in my right) not to signify that I was wealthy, which is never a look I've gone for (takes too much maintenance) but to demonstrate that I was a weirdo. Now I wear none, and probably all the holes have closed up. It was work maintaining a bunch of additional holes... too much maintenance.
Re: (Score:3)
Tim Pool used to tell stories about his time at Vice
He was just on a Valuetainment podcast last week relaying exactly why he believed Vice bottomed out, check out PBD Podcast Ep. 266 at about the 15 minute mark.
Re: (Score:2)
"transgressive for the sake of being transgressive sans any actual depth"
Which, let's be honest, pretty much morphed into their Mission Statement.
I'm a fairly hardcore conservative but even I occasionally (and usually with surprise) found their oldest stuff quite compelling.
Then they turned into whatever would happen if Cracked and Huffpost had an edgy 20something baby.
Re: (Score:3)
Mises called it "malinvestment."
The company should never have existed at all. Cheap credit and exploitative employment practices were the only thing holding it up.
Gloating (Score:1)
That's pretty valuable (Score:2)
FTA: The media company was once valued at $5.7 billion back in 2017
From an interview published in 2018:
That valuation seems optimistic.
Re: (Score:2)
What's a "chief revenue officer" doing at a company with no revenue? No wonder it wasn't profitable.
Some of their older content was quite good (Score:2)
In the old days Vice produced documentaries by going into troubled world spots where others dared not go. They were done very well. Then they raised a lot of money. That increased the pressure to produce garbage.
Blaming the harsh realities of digital publishing? (Score:5, Insightful)
... but not the content? If you were to ask me a few years back who the most toxic media creators of a media outlet were, I'd probably start with Vox, Buzzfeed, and Vice. It's one thing to an extreme viewpoint from the rest of the country, it's another thing to literally belittle the majority of the country with a level of arrogance that infers that everyone believes what you believe and those who don't are reprehensible creatures. Yea, that's not a good business model.
Which is a shame because there was a time maybe 25 or so years ago when Vice was a hip magazine that could talk trash and get away with it, mostly because their trash talk was "cool" and it wasn't overtly ideological. And they've put out a number of great documentaries as well.
Re: (Score:2)
"the most toxic media creators of a media outlet... Vox, Buzzfeed, and Vice"
Buzzfeed News won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021. Vice News won two Peabody Awards in 2015 and another in 2018. Vox Media has won four James Beard awards.
Good, Old Stuff (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Russian logging camps manned by North Korean slaves (who are shipped up by rail, attend NK propaganda courses on-site, and might not even realize they're in a different country):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The Japanese suicide forest (AFAIK a pioneering doc that originally spread word of it to many in the West):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If all media companies produce the same content... (Score:1)
It's inevitable a lot of media companies we all knew and admired at one point, are going to go away.
That's because they all produce the same line of government-aligned programming.
Just look at Vice today. "Human DNA raising privacy concerns". Articles about Eurovision and Lithium.
Is this the New York Times? Is it Buzzfeed? Is it CNN? Is it the Wall Street journal? It could have been any of them.
I don't think Vice has touched anything actually edgy for what, maybe five years? Ten? Just the same corpo
Journalism retired a while ago (Score:1)
I think we hit a shoe event horizon on online news.
Exacerbated by journalism dying a slow death of starvation: Journo sk00l graduates have had their heads stuffed full of indignant but otherwise uninformed inability to discern much of anything beyond shouting "that's racist!!!1!" [newdiscourses.com] like that little girl.
We used to have a saying here (translated), "the newspaper is a gentleman", meaning they have their opinions but you can still depend on them to at least bring the news. This hasn't been true for a while. Ev
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
That's because they all produce the same line of government-aligned programming.
You've gone full crack-pot. Who am I kidding? You've been cracked for a while now.
Just look at Vice today. "Human DNA raising privacy concerns". [...] Is this the New York Times? Is it Buzzfeed? Is it CNN? Is it the Wall Street journal? It could have been any of them.
Oh, no! A news story on a news site that could have also appeared on other news sites?! Inconceivable!
I don't think Vice has touched anything actually edgy for what, maybe five years?
That's the problem with you right-wing nuts. The purpose of news is to inform, not entertain. I'm sorry that you don't find reality interesting enough to hold your attention.
There is still room in this world for real journalism, that would not cover for left or right, that would only seek out truth.
You just complained about a news site not being "edgy" enough. Ugh... Not that you could tell the difference between straight news and outright pro
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You've gone full crack-pot. Who am I kidding? You've been cracked for a while now.
A good solid personal attack to start your sound rebuttal with.
That's the problem with you right-wing nuts.
You might find it hard to swallow, but well-worn know-it-all prattle does not an argument make. Regardless of what assumptions, by preference utterly baseless, you use to prattle with. This is "look world, that over there is sooooooo not me. AM NOT! AM NOT! AM NOT! And don't you forget it!" also known as virtue signalling.
Very mature by your standards, I'm sure. But then, pushing back at "right-wing nuts" like that makes you a "left-wing nut",
They Took Niche to the Logical Extreme (Score:2)
Colossus (Score:2)
Is not a word I've ever associated with Vice.