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?
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.