Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

They're just not making enough money. They're making money, but not enough. There's a large drive to produce more with less, and to reboot.

Journalism, especially good journalism, is expensive. Expensive to execute, and expensive to produce.

And everybody wants it for free now.

Wonderful. I've been thinking about an excuse to post this even before clicking the discussion link.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/mcclatchy-follows-buzzfee...

I have a sense that big waves like this are a leading indicator for market as a whole.

I've been wondering this myself.

One possibility is that lots of companies had layoffs proposed/planned, and they've accelerated their schedules to be part of the "wave". Better for investor confidence to be one more name in a followup story than to be your own headline.

Another is that the October-onwards stock drop eroded the prospects of a lot of borderline companies all at once. I'd be a bit surprised by both the timing (well into the rally) and the ownership range (everything from private founder-owned to private Disney-owned to public) though.

Third, I suppose, is that they didn't have them planned but saw an opportunity. If you lay off 10% of your staff in isolation, you might well lose another 5-10% of the best people who go find safer jobs. But if there's a clear industry crunch, it becomes a more appealing way to balance the budget because you can deflect the anger and resignations that otherwise come along with layoffs.

So how could it be related to any hiring or layoff trends in the media industry? And that's assuming this money was allowed to be used as direct subsidy to non-government news outlets.

They were all "darlings" of a free and open internet and social media. They either started in the mid 2000s or had their growth in that era ( vice started in the 90s but their major growth occurred in the mid 2000s ). Without an open and free internet and social media, they would never have been created let alone thrived.

Unfortunately for them, big media companies ( nytimes, cnn, wapo, etc ) that they compete against have won preferential status within social media and the wider internet. So they are now struggling to grow and even stay afloat.

They only have themselves to blame so I have no sympathy for them. They are the ones who demanded that "authoritative sources" get preferential treatment on google news, google search, youtube, facebook, etc.

If search results or the news feed aren't based on merit but human moderated "authoritative sources", then there is no room for buzzfeed, vice, huffpo. Whereas the nytimes, cnn, wapo, etc have structural advantages, name recognition and other broadcast avenues, these small companies are entirely internet/social media driven.

You would have thought that they would have protected their turf rather than cheerleading nytimes, cnn, wapo, etc taking over their turf. But oddly enough, buzzfeed, vice, huffo, etc have been the greatest champions of a closed and moderated internet.

Whereas I used to see buzzfeed, vice, huffpo articles/videos on youtube and google search on a regular basis. Now I hardly ever seen them. Instead, I see a lot of cnn, wapo, nytimes, etc results and recommends. I've never used facebook, but I'm guessing the same thing has happened there, just as happened with google news years back.

Also, these layoffs are just a tip of the iceberg. They are laying off during a major economic growth, low unemployment and tons of easy cash floating around. Imagine the pain they are going to feel when the recession comes and money gets tight. But as I said, they only have themselves to blame. And it's only going to get worse as tech companies ( at their request ) only allow "authoritative sources".

Anyone know how this compares to other organizations?

A friend works there as a video editor and they work exclusively on the weekly show, which kind of leads me to believe that they probably have teams allocated to a single property. I also know they'll work on one episode for a couple of weeks, so they have separate teams of people working on separate episodes at once.

Edit: my friend was a freelancer there for a few years before they were hired

vice (not the site) and buzzfeed news (not regular buzzfeed) are a new beatst in the news industry. they sell tailored pieces (pretty much an improved model that wired used to reborn in the 2000s). for example vice got a huge account promoting gun hobby. go to their YouTube channel and you will see half of their documentaries are touting the fun of owning guns. the site now only exists as a payment hub for those documentaries. buzzfeed (and Verizon media) tried the same but are moving much slower (but you wait when an election is around the corner, you will hear a lot from those)

(1) The community is very small. and (2) That community would likely not want to read this.

Is the intended audience center-left folks? I don't really see why that audience would want to read this. Is the audience center-right? Full-throated right-wing? I don't see why any substantial number of conservatives would care to read this?

I have a pet theory about the rate of absurdity in a world being dependent on the rate of both population growth and communications connectivity, but I won't bore anyone here with it.