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Vice files for Bankruptcy
- red_trumpet 3y agohttps://archive.ph/7kJ9H https://archive.ph/7kJ9H
- shp0ngle 3y agoVice is... well, Vice. I will miss their dispatches from war zones (I want to say "unfiltered", but they are filtered of course) and their Motherboard (Joseph Cox himself carries Motherboard on his back)
- bitxbitxbitcoin 3y agoHope Joseph Cox lands somewhere even more impactful.
- hutzlibu 3y agoDo people consider this as a great loss? I did not liked the sensationalistic format very much, so I avoided them, but they seemed to have done some investigative journalism?
- altacc 3y agoAlmost every closure of a real news outlet is a loss to society as a shrinking news market means stronger echo chambers and narrower reporting. Vice does some good reporting and in areas that others won't or only glaze over. Basically, variety & competition matters.
- nsonha 3y agoTwitter for one is net negative to society, at it does is making it extremely hard for people to actually discuss anything.
- lannisterstark 3y ago>Almost every closure of a real news outlet is a loss to society (X) Only if they are good outlets. The loss of Gawkers was absolutely a net positive to society for example. Vice used to be absurdly good, mind you, but that was 10-15 years ago at best. There may not be that much of a loss here either, like Gawker. On the other hand, if stuff like AP, Reuters, or CS Monitor closed down, THAT would be an actual loss. Those people actually still do good investigative journalism now and then.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elorant 3y agoI liked their motherboard columns. Very informative and well presented.
- pmoriarty 3y agoThey've had some really good content... sensationalist, maybe, but focusing on interesting parts of life few other publications would touch. For that insight I am grateful.
- usrusr 3y agoI do. Was it all good? Certainly not. But they tried to get some money into actual journalism instead of just doing a presentation layer filled with copy paste. That's a tough problem in this day and age of reader-paid news simply not happening. That's not happening not only because we are so greedy, it's also not happening because we certainly don't want to get back to only reading that one paper we happen to be subscribers of, as it used to be before the web. We desperately need a "spotify for news", preferably with a two tier setup that allows a "play" of something investigative to have more weight than simple news agency copypasta. And preferably not with a central giant gatekeeper squeezing content suppliers as hard as possible but as a bottom-up coop, with reverse syndication (subscribers of A get elevated guest access at B and subscribers at B get guest at A) that redistributes a percentage of subscription revenue according to the spotify model (play/read counts). But as long as that doesn't exist, Vice was the closest thing we had to get post-print journalism funded.
- bearmode 3y agoThey did indeed do a lot of very real journalism. Something most outlets just don't do anymore. It's a huge shame.
- ftrobro 3y agoIn January 2017 they (Motherboard) published a long and detailed article (translated from Das Magazin) about how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data to help get Trump elected, somthing I thought was important for everyone to know about. A year later bigger media "revealed" the same information and it became big news around the world. https://www.vice.com/en/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win https://www.vice.com/en/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-...
- makomk 3y agoThe whoe Cambridge Analytica story was one of the major steps in the descent of the media into partisan ragebait, though. Political campaigns have long had a much more boring but effective way of getting the data they need to get out the vote which mostly boils down to asking people (and of course recording the results in a database). The Trump campaign seems to have seen the Cambridge Analytica data as a worse alternative to the traditional approach if the Republican Party didn't give access to their own, long-running voter database. The basis for their personality analysis was pseudoscience and I think it was apparently even tested and didn't work that well. That reporting was less about informing people that it was delegitimising an election result that many people didn't like by blaming a website that many journalists didn't like because it had siphoned advertising money away from them. For bonus partisan points, the previous Obama campaign had used people's Facebook interactions for voter targetting in a way that was ethically fishy, and this was spun as a clever and positive thing. Imagine if some of your friends were secretly siphoning off all your social media interactions with them into a political party algorithm that decided which of the people they talked to could be most effectively convinced to vote Obama - that's basically how their system worked, and it got glowing coverage after the fact in places like the New York Times that boasted about how effective it could be for commercial advertising too.
- junon 3y agoVice used to have a lot of really great reporting. To see what it's become now is saddening to me.
- samwillis 3y agoOther longer thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376
- rvz 3y ago[flagged]
- DamonHD 3y agoThe reason that I avoided that bunch was the very opposite of them being woke.
- commitpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- grandpoobah 3y agoIs there a point after which an organisation goes woke, but doesn't go broke, that we can say "they probably didn't go broke because they went woke"? Because they were "woke" for quite a long time.
- timonoko 3y agoQuite useful "How to urinate in Public"-video by lovely and talented Gavin McInnes has been totally cancelled from internets. It was transphobic, of course, by assuming certain anatomic appendices are common among masculines.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slaw 3y agoThere must be some other reasons. Disney and Netflix are doing fine while pushing propaganda.
- detrites 3y agoDisney's share price has halved from its two year high.
- lrpe 3y agoI remember how cool their stuff was ~10 years ago. Won't miss what they became.
- ghosty141 3y agoExactly, Hamiltons drug reports, the documentaries about conflicts you never heard before and the more outlandish stuff they reported on back then were great. I havent watched a Vice piece in ages, their new content became an edgier buzzfeed…
- InitialLastName 3y agoThe guy (I don't remember who) who did a lot of urban exploring of abandoned (often eastern bloc) theme parks and such was amazing. They were very willing to publish people writing about all kinds of weird stuff (from an international perspective); it's a shame they couldn't translate that ethos into the modern internet era.
- sorokod 3y agoSome of their reports were remarkable, for example "The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia" [1] - that takes courage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo
- smcl 3y agoOh man this is from the really early days. It's where most of us learned of the bizarrely named Liberian fighter "General Butt Naked" for the first time.
- danpalmer 3y agoFascinating story, and a great retelling on the Behind the Bastards podcast if anyone is interested. The history of Liberia isn’t the nicest topic, but something that doesn’t seem widely known and maybe should be.
- user_named 3y agoNo it's not. Vice had already been around for 15 years at that point.
- pessimizer 3y agoAs a fashion magazine.
- timothyduong 3y agoCounterculture and fashion originally
- vanyamarka 3y agoThere's an interesting confrontation over that piece in the NY Times 'Page Six' documentary, which filmed David Carr, the Times's then media correspondent, interviewing the Vice Founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo I think part of the Vice pitch was always that it was a disruptor of the old-fashioned media narratives, uncovering the stories to which boring old media was blind. I tend to agree with Carr's implicit critique here that we undervalue the journalistic, societal value of the sort of unglamorous coverage in which traditional media invests and at which it excels.
- chmod775 3y agoSome years ago they had a large audience, me included, who got great value out of their investigative journalism. At some point they started pivoting into some weird form of advocacy journalism and clickbait garbage, alienating their existing audience, and apparently failing to find a new one. Good riddance.
- fredgrott 3y agoWhat happen is that they took market money which means they no longer had to be hungry and do good and honest journalism.
- throw_m239339 3y agoThey started edgy (Gavin McInnes was the co-founder), they became partisan. I'm no fan of a certain Youtuber, but he started at Vice News, and he claims that when the sex harassment lawsuits happened, Vice had to make themselves look "clean" for investors and so become more "aligned" with the US political left and became essentially yet another PAC like Vox media or Buzzfeed.
- caseyross 3y agoIsn't it more likely to be the case that no one was willing to pay for the investigative journalism? You see this everywhere. The clickbait is a funding source for the real work. Journalists almost never want to push garbage on the public --- they're usually forced to by management, either as an attempt at growth-at-all-costs or as a revenue source of last resort.
- gspencley 3y agoGiven they are declaring bankruptcy, there seems to be a signal indicating the possibility that no one was willing to pay for the alternative either.
- clemailacct1 3y agoThis is so spot on of a rebuttal. Vice’s shift into what they’ve become was a top-down terrible choice from what they used to be.
- bearmode 3y agoGod what a shame, they put out some really damn good journalism.
- unixhero 3y agoNo more Better Man episodes :(
- nubinetwork 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376
- trollied 3y agoI liked some of their output. Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is an amazing show, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
- fergie 3y agoIts easy to take the piss out of Vice, but the world would be a much poorer and less informed place without it.
- oger 3y agoRemember what they did to Naomi Wu (aka. SexyCyborg / https://www.youtube.com/@Naomi-Wu https://www.youtube.com/@Naomi-Wu). Vice's behaviour was unethical at best and Naomi - who is a wonderful tech content creator - got into significant trouble putting her business at serious risk. Why would you do that as a "journalist"? https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-naomi-wu-my-experience-with-sarah-jeong-jason-koebler-and-vice-magazine-3f4a32fda9b5 https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
- pimlottc 3y agoThat's a long read, can you provide a summary? I've never heard about this.
- oger 3y ago[flagged]
- nh23423fefe 3y agoSaying "remember what they did" is content free. You couldve just said it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- phreack 3y agoApparently, she spent some days with Vice journalists and showed them around for an article, believing due to some documents they'd sent that they would not inquire or publish anything about her personal relationships, and when they were back they started asking about some Reddit theories about her marriage status. She implies that kind of publicity into her private affairs is incredibly dangerous to her life and can't even specify why without exposing herself to that danger, so she immediately attempted to find out and stop what Vice was going to publish without any luck. This snowballed into a long online fight where major name journalists would tweet at her but not reply to her, making her feel desperate and leading to the Medium posts compiling a bit of her story during all this.
- berjin 3y agoWhenever I think of Vice I think of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA
- plantain 3y agoReally sad about this. Vice went places no one else would go, and did deep dives on topics (drugs) conventional media wouldn't touch.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoAnyone want to try to buy it with me? Might be fun.
- JohnClark1337 3y ago[dead]
- alphabettsy 3y agoMakes me sad. I love their content.
- skymast 3y ago[flagged]
- kingsloi 3y agoBummer, I haven't watched much of their more recent stuff, but I absolutely loved their "The Last Week of High School in Gary, Indiana" episode/story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plqd8APvln0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plqd8APvln0
- karaterobot 3y agoWhen Vice's quality went down, did any other independent journalists step into the breach? There are plenty of good analysis channels on YouTube, but I mean actually going into (e.g.) a warzone and reporting from the ground.
- pessimizer 3y agoVice's quality went down almost immediately, so there was no breech to fill. Certainly not a breach in independent media, because Vice was invested in by the same array of creeps and ex-generals as everyone else; they were an attempt to sell empire to the hipster children of rich suburbanites who moved to New York for graduate school. Vice started as a reasonable imitation of Journeyman Pictures [https://www.journeyman.tv/ https://www.journeyman.tv/] that did drugs and didn't think women should host documentaries. Then it found a few bilingual fashion models to mix in with its middle-aged beardos, and sold itself to the borg for a billion dollars. Its secret weapon for profitability was a fleet of upper-middle class children who were supported by their parents in NY apartments, so you didn't have to pay them. Unfortunately, they were repulsive to audiences. edit: so the answer is and was Journeyman Pictures.
- ETH_start 3y agoTheir employees only unionized 8 years ago. The rapid decline and eventual bankruptcy of a company following unionization is a common pattern. And unfortunately, the bankrupt company cannot get out of its collective bargaining agreements, making it difficult to find any buyers for its business units.
- truculent 3y agoPer Wikipedia, Vice started its digital operations in 2006/07. So “only” 8 years is about half of that time