Vice, Decayed Digital Colossus, Files for Bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

Vice, Decayed Digital Colossus, Files for Bankruptcy

nytimes.com

285 pointsmikhael254 comments

Irrespective of the reason, this really makes me sad. Vice had made some of the most incredible content and dared to go places others simply wouldn't.

As a Pakistani, I can tell you it's very rare to see media go there. Even movies that are supposed to be set in Pakistan (Zero Dark Thirty, A Mighty Heart, etc) are filmed next door in India. And other than maybe Al-Jazeera, I rarely see international media reporting from on the ground.

Vice not only went to Pakistan, but they did at least three episodes I can recall from there. And they covered some pretty important things, such as the disfunction that resulted in Pakistan being one of the last countries to still have polio.

I speak of Pakistan as one example because I know how little our stories are represented in mainstream media, but there are many other examples where Vice seemed to be the only ones willing to go on the ground. Other examples include North Korea, Haiti, and Syria. I'll never forget watching Isobel Yeung courageously reporting in Syria while bombs literally could be heard exploding around her.

Can you explain what TF is going on with Imran Khan? Everyone I see talking about it is either American or Indian and I'm sure they're wrong about basically every detail.

It's good what happened? It's bad? He's in jail?

To understand what's going on requires a deep understanding of Pakistan and its "military-veto democracy". This is the best explanation I've seen, from a veteran Indian journalist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0boy9JdZfWE

tl;dw: The powers-that-be in Pakistan -- the army and whichever political dynasty the army favors that day -- routinely overrule the popular vote because they don't believe that democracy will always spit out the best candidate. This is partly due to arrogance but also because the institutions that are supposed to keep a check on harmful populism in Pakistan are broken or corrupt. These powers-that-be have decided that IK is bad for Pakistan (twist: they're probably right about this; IK is a religious fundamentalist and a giveaway socialist in a country that is broke) and have invoked "special measures" to keep his name off the ballot or the ballot away from the people. Understandably, this has angered the people who have taken to the streets.

My impression (from western sources) is that he adopted religion and married a religious wife to distance himself from his western playboy past and broaden his political appeal. He chose a wife who is Sufi, which is a form of Islam that is legally accepted in Pakistan but which has been attacked for not being strict enough, because it focuses more on religious experience and less on religious rules than conservative scholars would like.

It seems like a smart choice for a politician who needed to cement his religious status to be viable in an overwhelmingly religious country but wanted to avoid the appearance of insincerity or hypocrisy in cases where he decides not to support conservative religious political policies.

Wrong thread?

The parent is claiming that Imran Khan is a religious fundamentalist.

These psychological explanations are post hoc justifications. Instead of pretending to know what internally motivates people, it's far more practical and fruitful (and dangerous) to look at who finances people. I guarantee the reason isn't because the army (whichever army or "whatever political dynasty") just wants what's best for people.

Pakistani, here.

What happened to Imran Khan is similar to what happened to and continues to happen to world leaders in unstable countries where the west financial and/or national security interests - sloppy regime changes.

As far as whether or not this turns out for the people of PK, we will never know bc he was nto in office long enough to do anything meaningful. PK needs like 20 yrs of stability to see any real progress.

I will say this - Imran Khan was very popular among the young, middle class types I know in PK (bc he is a populist), but not liked by western establishment governments. Take that for what it is worth.

The military have quite a strong political influence in Pakistan I think?

There is some parallel to Turkey, the military there had a lot of influence, until Erdogan out maneuvered them. The military in Turkey were supposedly protecting democracy and keeping the state secular, but threatening coups against democratically elected politicians doesn't scream protecting democracy to me.

European countries had a working relationship with Erdogan in the beginning because of this. Obviously power corrupted in the end.

It feels like a similar situation with Imran Khan (both did time in prison on politically motivated charges), but I don't know enough about Pakistani politics to be sure.

The reason for the strong political influence of the military is two fold:

1. Political institutions in Pakistan are very weak and when things start to truly go bad, people look toward the military to bring law and order and not their elected leaders. This in turn gives the military a seat at the table to impact internal matters and foreign relations.

2. India - using India as a general boogeyman since independence has given the military brass a lot of money and power. They in turn use this to further their political ideology and when things start to go a way they don’t like they can start a coup. In turn the people generally go along with this as they think army control might be better than their leaders to solve their issues.

Like it was mentioned, Pakistan needs a few decades of peaceful democracy to get their shit together. Otherwise it will keep circling the drain of being a failed state.

This was my take as well. Kahn signed an arms deal with Russia just days before the Ukrainian conflict happened. Less than two weeks after the invasion happened he was ousted from office. Pretty unusual, Imran Kahn has been wildly popular in Pakistan for decades, since at least the mid-1980s where he was a Cricket (sport) superstar

Wow I was not expecting to get down voted for that. If you have a differing opinion just say so

Imran Khan is one of a very few leaders in that entire region who is not corrupt, by general consensus. His political program is heavily social (practically socialist), as well as (unsurprisingly) anti-corruption. These are all great things, if you are the average Pakistani, hence his popularity.

Whether he is a good leader for the country is another matter. He is principled to a fault, which is probably also his downfall. In the world of realpolitik, he probably never stood a chance. It is questionable if he could ever actually carry out his policies, having antagonized practically the entire state apparatus.

Agreed. Also, the work by Simon Ostrovsky on Ukraine is unparalleled. (And available for free on YouTube).

I am not Pakistani but I was always surprised at the lack of attention too. Pakistan is a giant country with a ton of people and some pretty insane geography (mountains I mean) and yet there is not much media made in general about it.

It wouldn't be beneath VICE to use sound editing to put bomb sounds into takes that didn't have them there to begin with. They quite literally have no journalism code of ethics.

I used to read Vice when I wanted to know the details the rest of the media wouldn’t report on. The last time I read it was a few months ago. I was curious about the real facts around a certain incident. Instead of a unique perspective, I found the exact same lazy story as I saw on every other website. Plus a large helping of the boring divisive “culture war” crap that is so popular now - complete with actual naked quote mining of those the author disagreed with. How far Vice has fallen.

Vice seems to have fallen victim to the increased polarization and agenda-ridden stories that have swept up so many media companies. They used to report on unique angles, find edgy topics to talk about...the last few years they regurgitate the same left-leaning talking points that one can find in any number of other media outlets.

They lost their soul and became what they probably used to hate.

>They lost their soul

They accepted funding from large media companies (Disney), and got rid most of their founding members, and original employees replacing them with "journalists" that largely float around between those properties that "regurgitate the same left-leaning talking points"

And in between all that is a sprinkling of truly high quality journalists who are doing none of that crap.

As I said elsewhere in this thread, I really hope they'll find a new home somewhere - where the context for their work is not being ruined by all the one sided culture wars "reporting". Oh, and all the drugs stuff.

I'm truly over the divisiveness so prevalent seemingly everywhere. Please let some nuance in, perhaps magic will happen.

Given they were forced to file bankruptcy on behest of their creditors whom are taking over the company, both of which are highly political and partisan (including George Soros) I would not hold my breath for a return to "quality journalism" anytime soon

I was specifically wishing for the actual quality journalists to find a better place to continue their excellent work.

The problem is that Vice kind of stories are costly to produce. And are not sensational enough to get a lot of clicks.

It's easier to do a typical 'Culture War' fear mongering type content and get easy clicks.

Also, I think we are in an echo chamber where if you don't report on comment on the latest topic, you might be perceived to belong to the other side.

The West seems to lump issues into "Good" vs "Evil". Leaving no space for News media in grey area to succeed.

I can't think of any 'Moderate' News source that is massively successful. Most of the mainstream ones can easily be classified into one camp or the other. May be just degree of devotion to the camp differs.

I keep hearing these kind of arguments about in-depth reporting being costly.

Vice went bankrupt when it stopped producing those stories.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Media in 2016, Vice was making $1B ($10^9) with 3000 employees. ~$330,000 / employee. Can probably afford some plane flights and investigative telephone calls.

Per standard work year, every employee's 'supposedly' working 2080 hrs a year. ~6M work hours. You can write a lot of interesting stories, and follow a lot of leads other people are not looking at with 6M hours / year.

If you follow the "copy sensational click" route, you end up with a lot of local media, where it looks like somebody just copied the local police arrest report.

You don't stand out by just copying / dopplegangering whatever looks shiny.

Sometimes (not sure if this what happened here) an organization that works well oversells growth to its investors, and the only way to reach growth is to juice metrics in the most mechanical way possible, destroying what made the organization add value in the first place.

It's a profitable and effective political tactic to force a position on every issue and flush out fence sitters. Even in this thread you've got people classifying institutions by how aggressively they toe the line on one by one political bugbears.

But not profitable enough to avoid bankruptcy?

For political parties, not news organizations.

People keep making the mistake of thinking these organizations are driven by "clicks." They're not, they don't make any money anyway. They're driven by eyes, specifically the right eyes, and impact. They don't need to sell ads, the stories are the ads; they need to sell the stories.

Deutsche Welle seems pretty balanced

Breaking Points (to me at least) fills that middle ground where both sides are open for attack and worth defending.

They have been Intercepted (partnered with the Intercept mainly funded by billionaire Omidyhar). I observe them starting to follow the path of Vice.

> The problem is that Vice kind of stories are costly to produce.

Perhaps. But now look how costly it is not to produce them. You can "save" by being a commodity, but eventually the (missed) opportunity cost (of doing something unique) will catch up to you.

NPR

NPR was great 10 years ago, but they've also gone all-in on the culture war since then. There's a podcast/Youtube series that was linked here a while ago called All Things Reconsidered that does a good job breaking it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPvNucxB7TI

Very interesting video that verbalizes many thoughts I’ve privately had. I agree that NPR has gotten more sensational and hive minded over the recent years. I was pledging 10 years ago or so, not anymore.

Lately I was trying PBS because it’s pretty dry, but they’re also quite left leaning no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Ug2-Ou2Rc

No PBS is not left leaning. At least in my opinion. One thing I noticed about PBS is they always bring up both sides of the argument. And when they have people on to give opinions they have two people that a very mild mannered and speak eloquently. I also see them report on stories that you would see on either fox news or cnn but it's all facts, and almost always never opinion. It's kind of refreshing to watch. I think that is the reason is seems dry, because what they present are the facts of the story. There is no emotion added in and there is no hidden suggestion to try to alter your emotions.

Do they? I read the website regularly and I feel like I never see culture war bullshit?

Perhaps it's the case that the "culture war" isn't a thing media "goes in" on... It's a thing that's happening, and media can either choose to report it or pretend it's not occuring?

... but there's a lot about how the world works these days that just... Doesn't make a lot of sense if we pretend people don't care passionately about some fundamental divisions.

NPR has always seemed more neutral than actively tacking toward a moderate position.

For all that don’t know you have a text only version: https://text.npr.org/

I love NPR I am just a little sad that for the past 2 years it feels like they switched from raw boring neutral to a little bit left.

The political analysis suggests that NPR has remained pretty stationary; what has swung is that America grew a vocal far-right wing with enough political clout to be heard in the conversation, and that pushed the national centroid away from where NPR sits.

In a world where Tucker Carlson has had a successful television commentary career that didn't immediately result in every show sponsor pulling up stakes and leaving until his networks bade him go elsewhere, NPR looks liberal.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda...

I think people often use "liberal" to mean left-leaning, whereas it's really more like center-right Democrat. If NPR were left-leaning, for example https://www.npr.org/2022/11/21/1137640529/railroads-freight-... wouldn't be titled "Largest rail union rejects contract, stoking fears of a strike" and have a first paragraph of "On the eve of the holiday season, workers at the heart of the supply chain are once again threatening to strike.". Fear the threatening workers. A left-leaning report would emphasize the struggle the workers are having negotiating with the exploitative corporations running the railways, and how Biden and congress pretend to be pro-labor but vote against the workers.

The modern leftism in the US hasn't been about working class for a long time. They use the same Marxist tactic of class divide but apply them to identities like race and gender to divide people in to oppressor and oppressed, and stoke up the current "culture war" to silent political opponent and gain money and power.

I just opened vice news from a North American location and went through the headlines. The politicization is through the roof, and the headlines do not match the context. I am sure there is a market for this type of journalism, but it is much smaller these days because every org left and right is doing it.

The funding mechanism of these organizations reveals a lot about the trajectory. Some start out with a lot of seed money with few restrictions. If they start to rely on big advertisers or funding from 'philanthropists', the content is usually influenced by these sources. The best publications I find these days are funded by donations from readers. This keeps them independent and not beholden to those big funders. Fund the good organizations via Patreon, Locals, Substack, direct.. to keep them honest.

I find it strange that it seemingly isn't mentioned in the top comments but the thing that killed Vice was simple: twitter.

It took down a lot of cultural media landmarks by usurping their relevance, Vice was one of the big ones.

They needed to move at the speed of gossip with takes that were truly original in order to survive. they didn't.

Media seems to all be A/B testing itself into the same bland editorial slants.

What is the difference reading NYT, WaPo, Atlantic, Vice, or a dozen other NY/DC based media sites?

Vice had a unique style of coverage 10-15 years ago but that definitely ended by/in the Trump era.

The NY/DC duopoly on media is largely because they have the footprint to be everywhere and write with depth and accuracy. Read the NYT and Axios and you'll have all you need on politics and world news. The ascent of independent media (the substack/podcast crowd) has started to take a huge bite out of the opinion/analysis market. The damage is coming in the middle. All the local newspapers and evening news shows are approaching irrelevance and it's going to be a disaster.

Having lived in a neighborhood popular with mid/late career journalists and editorial writers for the NYT, I can say that half of what I read there was a parochial take on life in Carrol Gardens in Brooklyn dressed up as something about the US at large.

Yes.

The media neighborhood shifted from UWS to Brooklyn maybe 10 years back, and so have all the media thought pieces.

I'm a staunch support of the NY Times, but their Style section can be truly obnoxious. I appreciate they need to pay the bills and throwing a few bones to the white upper-middle class probably has pretty high ROI.

The whole of "Nice White Parents" was laser focused on the narrow obsessions of the French expat enclave in Cobble Hill[1] and their awkward interactions with the residents of the Gowanus Houses during a short period when the aforementioned French parents were pushing for a French immersion program in the neighborhood school. But the whole thing is presented as though it represents national problems and trends. It was ridiculous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobble_Hill,_Brooklyn

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gowanus+Houses/@40.6837838...

The Real Estate section is pretty bad too.. and the "Magazine" & "T magazine" (not sure what the diff is but they are 2 entities in the menu)

Axios falls into the media reporting on media reporting on media trope that I absolutely hate. Twitter is full of enough of that already.

The first thing I see when I land there today is "Scoop: How Trump's team egged him on during CNN town hall".

Honestly - who cares. How is it even a story? Water is wet.

I grew up reading a lot more business news because 1) a lot of time money is the tail that wags that dog and 2) it doesn't get caught up in these tropes as often.

Bloomberg differentiates a lot from the Borg collective in that regard.

Honestly the left probably needs a Murdoch style maniac to conglomerate left of center partisan media into one megacorp at this point before they all OEM themselves to death. Fox basically has the entire right of center mind share while the left of center battle for the same viewers by providing stunningly similar content.

I used to read WSJ more often but their Op-Ed page has really gone off the deep end into Trump cheerleading which is not what I expected. My primaries are probably NY Times and NPR really, but I like Axios and am watching Semafor with interest. Otherwise, I have a slate of indies I check in on (Marcy Wheeler and Claudia Sahm are always interesting), but I've genuinely lost some of that when I quit twitter. I like the CNN homepage just because it's so broad. Like I'll never seek out celebrity news, but it's good to see whatever has bubbled up to the top of the national consciousness.

I don't think the left can really support a true maniac on par with Tucker Carlson. They tried Air America with Al Franken years ago and it was not bad, but didn't resonate. I remember a host trying to say the 2004 election was stolen by Republicans and I just turned it off. Don't remember who it was, but she didn't get any traction reading from the right-wing play book.

I don't mean the left needs a demagogue, I mean they need a business conglomerate to consolidate & compete.

Another good alternative to WSJ is FT. FT & Bloomberg subscriptions cost about 10x what WSJ does though. For me I am happier paying for one (or both of them) + NYT, than 15 different NYT-alikes.

NYT is by far the best at it. There’s a reason they’re not bankrupt and Vice is. Vice wouldn’t have gone bankrupt if they had stuck to their niche

AP News with an adblocker is solid too - half the time everyone else is just referncing an AP article / journalist anyways!

My go to is NPR, AP, and Al Jazeera for non US centric stuff.

The left already has a liber version of Tucky - Bill Maher I guess?

And the weird part of it all is how they have all moved to more and more restrictive paywalls over this time period.

Why would I maintain 5-10 subscriptions for content that is 80% the same?

I think the streaming video services are speed running the same issue. As a very casual TV watcher, why would I bother to pay $10ish each to NFLX, Disney, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, HBO, Apple for the 1-2 shows each I may care about.

In a way its not even the total cost, its maintaining accounts/billing info/worrying about cancellation policies across a dozen companies.

5 Years ago I stopped sailing....

Today the winds are strong, and the sailing is very good...

I used to love vice. They had some of the most engaging content covering things I'd never see. But then it all started to unravel when the platform mostly turned into cringey hipster New Yorkers telling me about their preferred way to consume weed 10 times a day.

That's literally how they started before they became a "news" organization. The "serious media org" era happened after the hipster content.

It has always been "news" for Brooklynite hipsters. I turned down a job with them after the interviewer asked me "you are a democrat, right?"

Well, it literally started as a Montreal hipster magazine. And yes, it fairly early moved to NYC but it was still kind of an indie cultural/hipster magazine for stuff like funny fashion "dos and don'ts" and music and cultural scene stuff. It wasn't really left-political at all. The shift to an American liberal news orientation happened post-9/11, and probably in the context of Occupy Wall St etc.

The thing is that Vice’s main appeal was always to the cringey NY hipster crowd.

It really wasn't. They just showed and and took over because their trust funds let them work without a salary.

Some of their early well known content was where to get coke in Brooklyn and how to sleep with a stripper. And in 2006, that was edgy ny hipster content. That was their brand from the absolute beginning. They just happened to also do some good video journalism along the way.

And youtube started as a dating app while only fans was meant to be sfw.

What something starts as and what it succeeds at are two very different things.

Except Vice did start and end that way.

So you just made up a story of fictional version of Vice being taken over by trust fund Millenials (whatever that means) and you didn't realize that the content you hate was present in Vice from start to finish of its lifecycle (and may have even made its actual journalism possible). And then, when called out on it, you pretended you did know that all along.

Yes and what it was successful as was something else again. The trust fund kiddies went away and actually interesting people took over. Then the trust fund kiddies came back and ran it to the ground. Same thing as reddit.

And who are these trust fund kiddies that left and came back?

Vice was/is basically the media equivalent of the outward perplex of when Joaquin Phoenix grew that beard and Sean Penn interviewed El Chapo.

Did you read the magazine in the early days, or just get to know Vice when they got into video?

When Vice was just the magazine, it was pretty influential considering it was just, basically, three guys. Gavin McInnes gets a lot of stick these days, but he was pretty instrumental to establishing the baseline "Vice-voice."

It kept its unique voice for a decent amount of time, but it eventually sank into a mode where it was where you went to hear the same things you heard anywhere else, but with a bit more blue language as an affectation of authenticity.

Going from Hipster Mad Magazine to Hipster National Geographic worked for far longer than I would have guessed.

Hey you just described my Brooklyn neighbor who works there!

Thanks for the downvote but I literally have an actual CentiMillionaire trust fund neighbor who works there :-)

I hope you mean hectomillionaire, because CentiMillionaire (~$10,000) is not what most people think of when they think of the trust fund crowd.

No it always was

yeah, if you think this is what they have been doing for the past few years, then you haven't really bothered to check out their work. They have been consistently doing some amazing international reporting that none of the mainstream media channels were/are interested in.

It’s not the only thing, but it’s the mostly thing.

Looking at their front page right now, over half the articles are buzzfeed-quality rubbish:

-“America Has Decided That Homeless People Aren't People”

-“5 Experts Tell us What They Think a Healthy Relationship Looks Like”

-“This Week's Coolest Drops, From Hoka to 'Seinfeld' x Percival”

-“Russia Wants to Build a MAGA Colony for US Conservatives, Lawyer Claims”

-“THIS WEEK ONLINE – Who's Afraid of the Proletariat?” -“I Went to a BDSM Convention With My Ex”

They still have some original reporting, but I stopped going to them years ago because I don’t want to filter through dreck, and certainly aren’t signing up for their updates, in order to watch for decent items.

It does seem like hipster stuff and I don’t understand who would want to consistently read this and who their target market is.

They seem to hire lots of people to write this stuff and are looking to be a “lifestyle news” brand but who wants to be into their nihilistic, negative lifestyle?

Oh, I didn't even think of their website articles because I barely go there. I might be wrong here but when most people think of Vice today, they think of their shows or the content on Youtube. Their news show was consistently doing great original work (some of which they would post on Youtube).

The same comment applies to their YouTube channel, just with different specific titles.

It's similar to Buzzfeed (News) really.

Vice always did clickbait / lifestyle, but they also invested heavily in real hard hitting stories that other outlets ignored. Of course they also continued the clickbait / lifestyle stuff alongside it.

For a while the Real Reporting was surfacing frequently, but not so much these days, even though they're still doing it. For whatever reason, people just don't seem to see / care / value that Real Reporting as much (I have my theories...), and these outlets are struggling.

i thought they've been doing that since forever?

Well this is what happens when you appeal to the 'Cringey hipster New Yorkers' and alienate your old viewership of showing underground or under-reported investigative journalism before 2012.

Now it seems like the readers have punished Vice when they went down that route in 2012 and all that got them was into bankruptcy much faster than they tried to predict Twitter's collapse.

Given that they chose to do that to themselves, nothing of value was lost. Henceforth:

Good riddance.

You've got the order backwards.

Vice was started by three Canadian junkies (they literally called themselves that), and for years was only available in print in the hippest neighborhoods of major cities, while printing salacious material that later became published as books like "The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" and "DOs & DON'Ts 2: 17 Years of Street Fashion Critiques". Very little reporting.

Then slowly, over the years, the reporting arm emerged as a force to be reckoned with, but it was for "cringey hipsters" first. The old, OLD readership.

Yes I'd say Vice was.. 10-15 years ago, "dirtbag left" city hipster media.

It converged on consensus left mainstream media after that.

No, more like 20-25 years ago.

I'd argue it ended around the GFC, so say ~15 years ago. They did some interesting reporting leading up to the crash, the occupy movement, etc.. and then blanded out for sure.

Did Vice kill itself, or was it murdered? I haven't paid a lot of attention, but it seems like Vice's content started going down hill right after they got into bed with Disney and Murdoch.

Disney... and Vice... Welcome to 2015!

I suppose the YouTube adpocalypse followed shortly after, too, demonetising political content. So, a perfect storm. No more money from political content, suddenly, and now your biggest shareholders, Disney and Murdoch, demand change to keep up. Shame that.

There's a rhyme that ends with "go broke"... I have seen a number of rather toxic Vice articles in the past few years, I wonder how profitable that turned out to be? I have a vague memory of them being edgy and interesting, but that's a long time ago.

Still, I'm sure I only saw fragments of their total body of work so it might be a skewed perception. My sympathies for those affected, these are tough times we are entering.

I don't want to name any specific examples to avoid derailing this discussion, but I've seen a few articles that were so bewilderingly incorrect that it almost seemed like the author somehow didn't have a good grasp of the English language or something. There weren't a huge number of them, but there were a few.

The thing then is: should I then trust other articles? I don't mind if publications have a political bent, either to the left or right, or if some opinion piece has some pretty far-out ridiculous views on something or the other (within limits). But journalistic pieces and even opinion pieces should get basic facts right and they shouldn't blatantly misquote people. I don't want to research and verify everything in-depth, so there needs to be some trust relationship between a publisher and the reader.

Every publication makes mistakes. It happens. But at some point the mistakes become severe enough that the trust starts to disappear. Misleading outrage drives attention, clicks, and views in the short term, but the long-term effects may be quite destructive if you're not careful.

I understand that the topic is contentious indeed, but I agree fully. I tried to be balanced in my comment, but even hinting at a certain possible content profile caused some upset it seems.

I also see now that they've published several high quality non-political eg warzone pieces recently; that's a real loss. I'm hoping these journalists will find a new space going forward, without the other baggage.

This view is under appreciated. I honestly do not care all that much if a news source has a political point of view, so long as it is _honest_. If they're honest I can deal with it. If I am interested in a labor dispute and I go to "world communist daily revolution worldwide" for their take and "capitalist Ayn Rand weekly" for their take, if both are honest between the two I can probably figure out what's actually happening.

It's possible to look at the same set of facts and to interpret them differently depending on perspective. I accept this, but _please_, can we come to agree to the same set of facts?

The problem is we're well past cherry-picking facts and well into making things up from whole cloth. The amount of 'news' that I read that is just absurdly wrong is disturbing. As soon as I find out a source seems to intentionally lie to me I discard it entirely. I'm more or less out of sources at this point.

Alot of media companies changed their standards and ethics in 2016 when the "wrong person" won an election they determined it was their job to ensure that "never happens again"

Disney and Vice definitely do not belong in the same bed. Unless maybe it was a funny cartoon of Mickey Mouse doing something salacious

Do you think there are any good cultural retrospects that cover the mid-2010s?

Wait until the 40's for wikipedia's coverage. You won't recognize any of it.

No, the people who write them lost and are still upset about it.

I'm a NYT subscriber, but a headline from them calling another (younger) news source a "decayed digital colossus" feels a bit rock-glass-house-y.

That being said, my personal opinion of them is pretty similar. I used to love Vice; it felt like they really were the news outlet that was telling a different story from the rest of media. Not a different perspective on the same story, a totally different story, and hard journalism at that. Could just be me, but it hasn't felt that way for years now.

Your observation reminds me of a fun 2010 interaction between Vice and NYT illustrating some tension then between the two outlets that is featured in the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times. (David Carr and Shane Smith would later laugh together about the exchange during a panel at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit in 2014.) Excerpt: https://youtu.be/iLmkec_4Rfo Full: https://hoopladigital.com/title/11049551

propublica is king of the hill right now.

NYT feels like they're doing a good job in the new digital space. I am subscribing to more news sites I value, and I hope others do the same!

Vice had one of my favorite pieces of internet content ever, maybe this is a business lesson about "stick to the knitting" or something... "stick to the pointy Mexican boots"

http://web.archive.org/web/20230128213354/https://www.vice.c...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veQkt4tS0Tc

Not only that, but Vice produced some of the highest quality, and only "mildly western-biased" reporting we have seen from world events.

See the 100+ dispatches from Ukraine 2014 mostly by Kamil Ostrovsky.[1]

But with time the amount of content by Vice literally exploded in magnitudes, and so did the quality of content and journalism.

Don't get me wrong, Vice still produced many other interesting contents, but eventually it has been so watered down by so many types of content that finding relevant or quality journalism became very difficult.

I wish they stuck with their initial spirit of focusing on quality reporting and content from around the world (NK, Ukraine, Africa etc), they would've built a terrific journalistic niche for themselves. A niche that I can't find anyone to be able to fill.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKsLlK52ss

Slight correction: Simon Ostrovsky

Fwiw he seems to be not very impressed with Vice's management https://twitter.com/SimonOstrovsky/status/165319938725684019...

Simon Ostrovsky :) And yes, Russian Roulette is amazing.

highest quality, sure... You probably don't mean things like this, right

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgbx9q/how-to-make-breakfast...

Appears catering only to millenials wasn't the best idea.

I may have expressed myself poorly, what I meant is that their interesting and quality reporting quickly became rarer among the huge amount of articles like the one you posted.

I guess that they tried to go for the click baity route of odd content to get more views, a route that is full of competition and has a hard time retaining recurrent readers.

I would've preferred they stuck with building a (definitely more expensive) niche of journalism in the spirit they were initially founded.

What does making breakfast with someone's vagina have to do with a specific generation, the youngest members of which were already working or in college when that particular article came out, and the oldest members of which were raising their own adolescents? Why does everything weird and alternative still automatically get labeled as "millenial" stuff?

The comments here really make you lose faith in our ability to communicate as a society. So many comments about Vice having become "too left"/"not moderate" where I'm uncertain with the examples where the line is between the writer expecting something super right as moderate or if I myself am way left. Otherwise ok comments arbitrary grouping and sigmatizing people. I think we've almost reached a complete breakdown in our ability to communicate with each other, at least in written form.

I am a millennial. Please don't cater this to me in any way, shape or form.

If you read or watched Vice News cca. 2014-2018, there was indeed plenty of high quality journalism. What’s that article got to do with it? And why do you think it caters to millenials specifically?

Their original content was Dos and Donts. You think that was quality? You don't know what Vice is.

Stop shitting over everyone with this obscure fact. When people hear vice they think their heyday of video content. You’re not cool or in the know for correcting people who are discussing this (the thing that made them famous in the first place.)

I have the book! Not sure it’s easily obtainable these days since McInnes is a persona-non grata.

Eddie Huang did a street food series with them that was also fantastic called Huang's World. I'm pretty sure it used to be called something else. What I liked about Vice was it all felt very unpolished. Huang, nonplussed, hangs with famous pornstar Jada Stevens while she's doing a shoot on the Bang Bus. That behind the scenes vibe dominated Vice video for a long time extending to their war coverage.

Funny because before Disney, akwafina was just hanging around with Eddie Huang on vice. Now she’s in all sorts of Disney stuff. I guess getting in bed w/ disney means you’ll die and disney will pick the morsels it likes

That was prime VICE

Publications are the Journalists that work there, and the culture that they create. If this is the end of Vice as a platform, it's not the end of that culture or the careers of the people that built it. Those journalists will take that culture of investigative, deep and sometimes immersive (gonzo?) journalism elsewhere.

Here in the UK we saw it with Buzzfeed News UK, when is was shut down in 2020 the journalists dispersed into other news organisations, some that they had worked with before (they had collaborated with C4 and BBC News on investigations), and have continued their important investigative work. I believe we will see the same with both Vice and Buzzfeed News (US).

Some will cheer its downfall, but there is an important place for all styles of journalism from all political leanings.

I absolutely loved the deep investigation side of vice. They lost me at the 10th iteration of "We smoked weed of of X" and some other low effort content about 4 or 5 years ago.

"Those journalists will take that culture of investigative, deep and sometimes immersive (gonzo?) journalism elsewhere."

I hope you are correct. I do worry though if this might require funding and general corporate buy-in these journalists might not get elsewhere. I also worry about their arguments carrying less weight in other organizations because "we did this at Vice" is now tainted. If Vice had been a massive success their suggestions would have gotten extra weight instead of now causing caution.

They stopped the investigational side a long time ago, it's safe to assume the people involved already moved along and took their culture elsewhere.

I'm sure tabloids and yellow rags are always looking for cheap writers, plenty of them still exist.

Vice and HBO had some good contents in early days. They reported on stuff mass media _failed_ to report on especially following the GFC when America was going through some tough times.

The most memorable was David Choe reporting on scrap metal scavenging in rust belt cities. That one, for some reason, hit me really hard.

I'm not sure why you think HBO has gone downhill -- I wouldn't compare vice and HBO. One was supposed to be a news organization the other entertainment.

HBO is still banging out great TV shows. Last of Us is the most recent that comes to mind.

Just to clarify, Vice was on HBO.

It was also on YouTube -- I still don't think YouTube and Vice are comparable entities.

Vice was originally only on HBO and was produced by Bill Maher’s production company for the first 6 seasons. So it was an “hbo show” in the beginning.

It since expanded out to YouTube and everywhere else. And I think hbo cancelled it and it moved to Showtime a few years ago.

Except that's not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Media

Vice was on YouTube before HBO and I definitely recall that -- not to mention it's own website hosted it's own videos before HBO. You guys are making out like that HBO/Vice are somewhat interchangeable terms like Google/Alphabet and it's not.

“Vice Media originally broadcast their news programs on HBO, which broadcast the Emmy-winning[13] weekly documentary series Vice, which premiered in April 2013.”

I’m not saying that they are interchangeable. I’m saying that Vice News programs were funded initially by HBO. It would be like if Stranger Things moved from Netflix to Hulu. It doesn’t mean that they are interchangeable terms, but that it started with Netflix and moved.

I am not saying that at all. I was simply referring to Vice production on HBO. I should’ve worded it better but this is just a casual message board for me.

No, Vice was originally a free magazine only on print.

I ran across their North Korea report when it was posted 11 years ago and was an instant fan. Shane was compelling and of course the topic was fascinating. Very few people had gotten in there and brought film out like that before, that I had seen at least. Very eye opening

https://youtu.be/24R8JObNNQ4

Good retrospective on the inflection point for this cohort of digital media in the generally excellent Odd Lots podcast recently (Search “End of an Era for Digital Media).

Their conclusion on Vice was that it was never in the same league as BuzzFeed or similar in terms of traffic, but had one of the most pure and influential brands in the space.

Vice and Buzzfeed really benefited from their social media strategy back when Facebook newsfeed began to promote more news articles. They were often featured together as the rising stars of digital media.

> [Vice] had one of the most pure and influential brands in the space

I also remember the Intel Vice campaign. Shows that Vice had such a strong appeal that Intel really wanted to reach out to their younger demographics back then.

As many have pointed out, I haven't seen their articles or videos going viral recently. When Shane Smith left, it seems that the voice of counterculture and rebellion disappeared from the editorial leadership.

> voice of counterculture

> Shane Smith is a Canadian journalist and media executive and former billionaire.

I can't be the only person who finds the application of the term "counterculture" here rather a debasement of the concept.

> Before Vice, Smith went to university in Ottawa, played in local punk bands, and travelled around Eastern Europe before moving to Montreal.

I’m not sure why money would be the measure for whether someone was counter-cultural enough, especially when they made their money through providing something that the mainstream (at the time, certainly) was not.

Counter culture != being in a punk band

Maybe it did in the 70s. But anything past that it’s basically the opposite. Punk music is oldies; literally half century old tradition at this point. It’s like calling folk music counter culture.

Smith was born in 1969, and being in a punk band was counter-culture right up to the point in the late 90s when Americans in the mainstream started to reuse the word (when grunge was being replaced) for bands that clearly weren't punk.

Aside from that, what does age have to do with being counter-cultural or not? The word you're looking for in your example is "new", or possibly "trendy".

Ok, that puts him in the zone of “real” punk. I was thinking he was a millennial. And no offense intended to any young punk rockers. It’s just a different thing when you’re imitating your parents or grandparents generation down to wearing the exact same clothing. Nothing wrong with that, but it ain’t counter culture.

Ouch. I think there's still plenty of post-70s punk that's counter-culture (see, for example, Leftover Crack), but I think you're right in that "pop punk" definitely dulled the edge of the genre in general.

You should look into Vice's origin as a underground music magazine.

The content definitely felt that way at one time.

You're just clueless. You don't know anything about vice.

I know very little about Vice but even after taking into consideration everything posted here, I'm still rather dubious that this is sufficient to warrant the label "counterculture"

> You're just clueless.

And you're just rude.

Everything you said was wrong, yet you said it with such confidence. Why don't you just admit you're wrong and don't know what you're talking about.

I said

> I can't be the only person who finds the application of the term "counterculture" here rather a debasement of the concept.

which isn't an objective factual statement and is therefore neither right nor wrong. Maybe you meant to use a word like "unjustified"?

Vice was born out of and defined the counterculture of their era. Again you don't know what you're talking about.

Or maybe, just maybe, people have different definitions of loosely defined words such as "counterculture".

I remember when Vice covered Russia's invasion of Crimea. It was phenomenal on-the-ground coverage at a time when all we got otherwise were CNN BS pros, and a precursor to a lot of new takes on war coverage. I remember "Huang's World", a jubilant food show that also revealed Eddie Huang's authentic, unfiltered Chinese American voice, who'd go on to success as Fresh off the boat author. Maybe this stuff was too easy to copy or too expensive, but Vice doesn't stand apart as much anymore.

Simon Ostrovsky’s reporting from Ukraine was great. He even got beaten up by little green men.

Shame. Vice was always my go to whenever I wanted a peek into a bizarre and unique corner of the world.

Maybe 5-10 years ago - now they mostly produce content similar to hundreds of other channels (IMO)

What other channels? Curious because I liked their zany micro documentaries and haven’t seen any similar which are released with any consistency.

This YouTuber scratches that itch for me: https://www.youtube.com/@IndigoTraveller

I've found Kurt Caz and Bald and Bankrupt go a lot deeper than Indigo Traveller.

One of my favorite recent videos from Kurt Caz is where he travels on the world's most dangerous road in Bolivia with Kevin the llama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGCSct5ONo

And this is exactly why a sizeable chunk of the world - even here on HN - is cheering their demise. Being different is definitely not generally acceptable.

What do you mean, at this point there are 10+ comments here saying the exact opposite: that their demise is due to them becoming less edgy and more bland, more like everyone else.

Probably as usual, at the time I commented the most comments were the negative ones, and only later the positives started coming. There was even a discussion about this temporal trend not long time ago...

VICE seemed to make sense at a given time + place + context: * Gonzo journalism: "On my way to North Korea I'm gonna stop by my auntie where over lunch she'd beg me not to go" * Peak hipster: pre-pandemic hyper-urbanised young white collar people who started making money * Excitement about Web 2.0 weirdness and the over-sharing culture

all of the above created a compelling package back then, but don't seem to scale to a "global media empire" Shane Smith wanted to make, one that would topple the incumbents.

Vice should have focused on their longer form doc content, they produced some really interesting stuff. Here are a few examples:

Golf, Booze & Guns: Inside Boomer Paradise -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0nqJ1yrrg

Inside the Wellness Festival for Millionaires -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BbNvim11fI

Scams, Zealots, and Jet Skis: Life Inside the Crypto Scene -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9hXfBo8Abo

The Untouchable Chaebols of South Korea -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFZge6V_is

"Be A Man”: Modernists and Traditionalists Debate Masculinity -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nE3EQEBzc0

Mexico's Most Wanted Drug Kingpin -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZoGOc3VCs

Tantra Island: The Search for Sexual Paradise -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UsWj15AFRs

Hamiltons Pharmacopeia -- https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/show/hamiltons-pharmacopeia

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo&

What do you mean should. If they did they wouldn't have existed to begin with. These things were always a minority of their content and it could never have been any other way.

These are interesting but in the current media industry it's hard to finance those without your listicles, clickbait-inducing opinion pieces, etc.

They should, but perhaps that way they'd have filed for bunkruptcy sooner

There’s no money in long form. It only works as a hook to get people to watch more profitable content.

interesting how certain industries were never "disrupted" by startups, no matter the amount of hype that was generated in the mid-2010s [1]; banking is a major example (no startup bank overthrew JPMC) but the same seems to apply to legacy media.

[1] Shane Smith (VICE founder) quote about Murdoch during an FT interview: "I have Gen Y, I have social [media], I have online video. You have none of that. I have the future, you have the past." https://www.ft.com/content/61c51d64-4a9c-11e2-968a-00144feab...

Like 10 years ago Vice bought the building that housed my favorite venue in Williamsburg, Glasslands, and then proceeded to do basically nothing with it. So I'll always hold that against them/the VCs who funded them.

lets not forget death by audio!

for context: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/nyregion/the-last-rites-f...

> The end of D.B.A., as it’s known, along with that of its neighboring venue Glasslands — Vice, the media conglomerate, is taking over the building — was met with hand-wringing but also weary resignation. As the neighborhood around it was transformed from abandoned lots to high-rise condos, it was only a matter of time until a small, semi-underground, all-ages club, which steadfastly kept ticket prices low, disappeared. Copies of Vice magazine were shredded in commemoration.

They were really good for drugs coverage, and I mean that beyond the "New York Hipster smoking weed 100 times a day" comment someone else made here.

Max Daly's probably the best drug reporter out there, and was the main reason I kept tuned in for so long. Was really the last bastion of their decent content.

> They were really good for drugs coverage, and I mean that beyond the "New York Hipster smoking weed 100 times a day" comment someone else made here.

Really sorry, but this just reminded me of this clip: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA

Didn’t they break the krokodil story in the mid-2010s? That coverage was some of the best footage I’ve ever seen. I think they also did that crazy shoot about the drug that turns people in clubs and bars into zombies in South America and allows the perps to control their victims like puppets. The drug in question also wipes the memory of the victims so they can’t report the crime. That was one of the scariest videos ever made. It really had an impact on me and I think I lost my faith in humanity for about a year after I saw it.

I was kinda thinking more along the lines (ahem) of reporting on drug policy and harm reduction, and in challenging shitty tabloid journalism on drugs.

Some older examples:

- https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppvgw8/is-the-drug-trade-rea...

- https://www.vice.com/en/article/4wm5xq/drug-statistics-uk-dr...

- https://www.vice.com/en/article/jmk4p3/glue-sniffing-epidemi...

https://archive.ph/IRRsX

As a person from Ukraine, I love Vice for their coverage of Russia-Ukraine conflict at 2014. But their last interview with a Russian children’s commissioner felt like its not Vice anymore. Seems like they been trying to provide an explanation on why russia stealing children's from Ukraine. So i'm not sure what do I think about vice at this moment. Maybe its time to go

That's what you got from that interview? I thought they were very neutral, and even asked some hard questions. To do the interview in the first place was a huge risk... To dig in and smear dirt in Russia's face would have been suicidal.

Previous story from 2 weeks ago, 133 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35780517

That was speculation. This happened today.

I mostly knew it for Simon Ostrovsky in eastern Ukraine. In the recent years it has seemingly become more politically biased like many other papers, so I stopped paying attention - it simply did not stand out anymore.

Vice to me was always just “high quality” news for people who read Pitchfork and the Fader and listened to Danny Brown and Ariel Pink.

In hindsight its “good content” of the war and drugs sort doesn’t feel too far off from the original angle of low-brow edginess that I feel like evolved and predated things like the “dirtbag left” and “El chapo traphouse” with less of a political bend.

I’m sort of confused as to what carried it into being heralded as a “digital colossus”, whose decline is described as part of the “end of an era” next to Buzzfeed News. Granted, once my own “New York nights at 21 edgy” phase tapered off around 2015-2016, I stopped regularly paying attention to it. At least Buzzfeed News had the accolades to justify its merit.

I suspect that around 2015-2016, right around the time when Supreme got sold to VF Corporation and Kanye and Kim Kardashian were in their prime, and Trump first stopped on (or off?) that escalator…there was a “vibe shift”…and whatever underlying cultural tones that everything that I’m describing can be categorized under sort of seemed “marketable”? But after Trump was elected, the vibe shifted again hard, and I guess Vice couldn’t keep up. Their target demographic is aging and the generation who follows them probably doesn’t have the stomach to tolerate their lack of taste and can probably figure out the “war and drugs” stuff on their own.

I don’t know. So much of this calls to forlorn days and I don’t expect much of the HN crowd to feel where I’m coming from.

If you know you know.

I think some of that vibe shift was happening anyway and the Trump presidency just pushed it into overdrive as the numbers were all pointing towards easy gains from doing that (similar to CNN's high ratings throughout his presidency).

Pitchfork following the 2015 Conde Nast acquisition was the actual point where it drifted off imo into being wildly predictable with what it would champion.

Several others (most notably for me the avclub) had had several years of struggles then a very abrupt and marked decline in content with Univision acquisitions circa 2015/2016; eventually blurring into a uniform kind of sludge that seemed to intentionally blur the lines between several once disparate audiences. Meanwhile attempts to create new outlets for the content that had been ditched tended to commercially flop (e.g. the Dissolve)

Relatively speaking Vice was a lot better than most of these outlets in that it would still occasionally have some good content, but I guess this was largely due to the value of its brand ensuring it weathered that wave of acquisitions.

Okay, so I'm not tripping. This is just the first time I've had to think critically about the mid-2010s awkward bend that I think you describe well, "a uniform kind of sludge that seemed to intentionally blur the lines between several once disparate audiences." At the time, I never paid much attention to how stiff the competition was during this period and how much money was being shoveled into the media outlets in such a weird market.

Now I'm reminded of an associate who was afforded a job opportunity at Vice that was basically an invitation to shill junk food on Twitter. And Verizon owning Complex Magazine (which is now apparently owned by BuzzFeed...)

What an odd time. No wonder it fell apart.

This is one of their best videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O16JP0YRKv4

They managed to embed with our elite LRR special forces (our only tier 1 unit) which was very secretive and maybe the only time anyone will see them in action.

All of those crazy videos are always from Isobel Yeung. I saw her travel to Xinjiang, Ukraine, Taliban's Afghanistan, Syria before and after Assad...

Their research team is crazy good. Even our local journalists can't get a hold of our special forces.

https://archive.is/IRRsX

Really a shame but can't say it's unexpected. For every incredible documentary video there were ten videos about some skateboarder who once appeared in the background of a music video or about how transgender tattoo artists are the only thing holding up Western civilization.

If Vice had stuck to making sensible documentaries and news coverage, they could have focused on that niche while selling their content to Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc.... Hopefully this bankruptcy is an opportunity for that.

Vice used to be a really fun magazine to flip through. I enjoyed some of their mini docs but never really sat down to watch their HBO show regularly. They really pushed for growth which in retrospect, should have been recognized as a reach. Wish they somehow continued with a smaller footprint, putting out interesting, unusual content. But maybe it never was profitable. Maybe they followed the same VC playbook of taking on more capital and promising continued, rapid growth.

Never really liked Vice. Something about the way it is filmed, making reality more "dramatic". Even though it seemed on average good quality reporting.

Vice is how I learned about Bitcoin circa 2012 and how I learned about the casual psychedelic mushrooms consumption in Oaxaca, Mexico.

They've gotten away from high-quality docs in recent years (as has much of the media) but the Abandoned series from ~2016 was a beautiful portrait of the underbelly of America and the people who live there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDniDNY03JE

> A group of creditors could buy Vice for $225 million.

So I guess the $400M acquisition bids that were reported didn't go through?

I guess. Isn't it usually the case that if a company has sufficient tangible and intangible value and competition between interested bidders, that it gets bought normally; but if its value is substantially less than the total of its assets, debts, equity etc., then the few bidders will wait until a bankruptcy process eliminates a substantial part of the former debt and all the equity to leave a saleable core business, which can only happen in a bankruptcy proceeding anyway. Something tells me that post-ZIRP we're going to see that happen a lot.

I didn't read vice often, but there videos on the afghanistan war is some of the most intersting coverage of the war i have seen and made the subsequent failure make sense https://youtu.be/BKHPTHx0ScQ

The 2014 Ukraine coverage is brilliant.

Does anyone care to explain why on earth they don't have the "donate" button underneath their Youtube videos considering the number people who (still) appreciate the quality of their reporting on certain topics? Is it because they get demonetized?

I would guess because it simply wouldn't make a difference to their bottom line.

Zero will always be Zero. But their demise is not only a problem of 1 Billion in liabilities but also of not finding new revenue streams.

Probably because they are a for profit corporation, not a charity. So the same reason why there’s not a tip jar in your neurosurgeon’s office and no donate button on AP videos.

Neurosurgeon doesn't give his/hers content for free, Vice does. I would like to offer my token of appreciation through one or multiple "tips" when I encounter a FREE video I really liked, same way I do to some other content creators.

Vice shows ads. So does AP.

Vice’s business model doesn’t run on tips, it runs on ads and YouTube revenue split.

That’s nice that you want to tip a huge corporation but it seems that you are rare enough that Vice hasn’t found it meaningful enough to add a tip method.

Personally, seeing a tip jar on a “news” organization’s content would be about as welcome as seeing a tip dialog at my dentist office.

Related thread from 2 weeks ago: Vice is said to be headed for bankruptcy [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35780517

I really loved their series Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia. In-depth, raw drug making and taking by a serious (though odd) expert.

A shame they geofenced the shit out of it, forcing me to pirate it.

It’s weird that no one is seeing the big picture here. Media companies are collapsing because three companies (meta, google, amazon) monopolized the advertising money.

Vice News Tonight, when it was on HBO, was fantastic. 30-minutes of global headlines moving very quickly. I would have paid $15/month for this show alone.

Vice content is pretty awesome a lot of the time so this sucks

I hope they can survive this

when other companies go bankrupt they go away for good, like Washington Mutual; when media companies go bankrupt they just change hands but still exist, like Newsweek.

Plenty of other companies continue after bankruptcy restructuring as well. American Airlines, General Motors, and Marvel Entertainment all went through bankruptcy in their past.

Yeah I think finance might be the exception more than the rule. If you're gm people might say "oh they make good cars but didn't get the finances right, so they had some trouble". The brand isn't hurt. But if your main product is financial, if your brand value is directly dependent on the financial security people feel about it, bankruptcy is a major blow to the brand.

Maybe the journalists should learn to code.

These days they would do better learning to weld or frack.

I'm referencing the journalists and their "lEaRn tO CoDe" they tried pushing for a while when people were losing jobs, and now they themselves are being made redundant. https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/1/29/18201695/learn-to-c...

Creators who made the things that comments in this thread said they liked about Vice "back when it was good", and where they are now:

- Suroosh Alvi, documentaries on Pakistan. Vice co-founder. VICE season 4 on Showtime.

- Simon Ostrovsky, Russian Roulette on Ukraine. Now with PBS NewsHour; most recent story on US company Haas Automation working with the Russian arms industry. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/american-company-accused-o...

- Henry Langston, Russian Roulette on Ukraine. Founded Change Incorporated under the VICE umbrella. Freelanced for Huffpost and still occasionally for Vice.

- Isobel Yeung, Putin's Crimea, Syria war, 2017 Philippines armed forces embed. Still at Vice. VICE season 4 on Showtime.

- Maya Rostowska, documentaries on Ukraine. Still at Vice.

- Rick McCrank, Abandoned (2016), Post Radical (2018). Was then and still is a pro skateboarder and skateshop owner. Co-owns skate wheel company Momentum. Probably on a skateboard in Vancouver right now. https://chromeballincident.blogspot.com/2022/09/chrome-ball-...

- Esteban Sheridan Cárdenas, Edith Valle. Look at These Fucking Boots. Sheridan founded music festival Norte Sonoro, then later a live-event production company. Valle is a freelance cinematographer: https://edithvalle.com/

- Eddie Huang. Directed Boogie (2021), currently writer/executive producer of upcoming series Panda on Showtime. Guested on Joe Rogan a month ago to talk about Vice.

- Daniel Michael Hernández, Munchies; Oaxacan shrooms. Left Vice in 2017. Relaunched L.A. Taco, then became food editor of the Los Angeles Times.

- Jake Hanrahan. "Is Bitcoin the Future of Money, or Just the Future of Buying Internet Drugs?", 2012; also covered Turkey, Ukraine for Vice in 2015–16. Left Vice in 2017 "due to differences with the new management's editorial direction". Freelanced on Atomwaffen Division for Documenting Hate with Frontline PBS/ProPublica, then founded Popular Front: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5reApl_5YtfqNEEQi5L8GQ

- Max Daly, 2019 series on drugs and crime. Still Vice's global drugs editor.

- Nagieb Khaja, 2015 Afghanistan coverage. Danish documentarian, still active.

- Ben John Anderson. This Is What Winning Looks Like (2013) and The Interpreters (2014) in Afghanistan, Fighting ISIS (2016). Suffers from PTSD. Was still working with Vice in 2022, as an executive producer on One-Armed Chef.

- David Choe. Scrapping (2014). An artist before and after Vice. Had a cameo in The Mandalorian, The Choe Show podcast got to FX with Andy Capper, and he now has a role in the Steven Yeun/Ali Wong Netflix show Beef.

- Andy Capper. Director, Scrapping, Vice Guide to Liberia, Krokodil Tears. Also did Lil Bub & Friendz, Chiraq, and Noisey's hour-long geographical docuemntaries for Vice. Most recently made People Like You about the opioid epidemic in 2022 for Happy Now Film/Malibu.

All of the videos in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35945196 are from the last 9 or so months, so no point in "where are they now"-ing them.

The exodus around 2017 around the time of two big changes: the June 2017 TPG $450M investment that valued Vice at around $5-6 billion: https://www.wsj.com/articles/vice-media-secures-450-million-...

Followed by the December 2017 NYT investigative report into alleged sexual harassment that turned over several of Vice's producers and editorial staff, including the head of Vice's documentary films unit, who had settled a lawsuit over alleged retaliation and had already been fired even before the report came out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/business/media/vice-sexua...

Good riddance? I got 2 entries of "cancer journalism" on my list with them.

NY times has 6 entries. If only they would go that would make the US maybe a little less divisive.

I agree. The "like and share" era + higher ad rates led to a proliferation of low quality, high division rags like Buzzfeed, Modern (not Original Flavor) Vice, Teen Vogue (?), Breitbart, etc.

You make money via ragebait shared on Twitter/Facebook, and you crank it out. You find some issue that's a great wedge - or you manufacture one - and you fuck that chicken until it dies.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I hope the Right goes back to the WSJ and Economist, and the Left goes back to what the NYT used to be. What we have now is a big part of why our Republic is so divided.

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