From Beacon of Hope to Bankruptcy: The Deep Fall of Vice Media – Business

Six years isn’t long, but in the digital news business, six years can be an eternity. As recently as June 2017, Vice Media raised $450 million in a funding round from investment firm TPG, at a valuation of $5.7 billion. Vice was seen as everything that traditional publishers weren’t, young, hip, cool, fast – a brand with a great future. In 2023 there will be little left of this assessment, not even in monetary terms. Early May had that Wall Street Journal reportedthat Vice Media is preparing for bankruptcy. Vice had previously tried in vain to find buyers who would initially take over the battered company for over a billion dollars and later for significantly less.

The current plan sees according to media reportsthat investor George Soros’ fund and investment firm Fortress Vice Media are buying out of bankruptcy for around $400 million.

That’s how it all started in 1994. With an advertising-financed magazine that was displayed where the cool young people met. The first German Vice edition was in 2005.

(Photo: Manfred Segerer/imago images)

Vice Media was founded as Vice Magazine 1994 by Shane Smith, who was also the company’s CEO until 2018. The advertising-financed magazine attracted attention with fearless and irreverent reports and stories – and managed to transport this style into the digital age. Traditional media companies, whose path to digital was much more bumpy, looked with envy at the hip news start-up, which treated itself to a huge headquarters in the equally hip New York borough of Brooklyn. Legacy media brands like Disney have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to bask in the glory of Vice. Much of that money is now likely to be written off – literally. The money is gone.

To the Wall Street Journal According to the report, the $400 million would only serve the old debt, including that of the Fortress Group involved in the proposed takeover. Most other investors, including Disney, TPG Inc., A+E and James Murdoch’s investment firm Lupa Systems, would reportedly get nothing.

Decorated but broke

Since the record rating of 2017, Vice had won tons of prizes with documentaries and reports, at the Emmys 2022, for example, productions from Vice Media won ten of the coveted trophies. At the same time, however, the company had repeatedly missed sales targets. Organizationally, things didn’t go smoothly either. Founder Shane Smith was forced to vacate his CEO post in 2018 after the New York Times had reportedhow uncomfortable a job at Vice could be, especially for young women.

Smith had evidently created a working environment that German readers could adapt to the latest reports on the Picture-Zeitung under boss Julian Reichelt should remember: Abuse of power, exploitation of dependencies, Boys Club are the allegations there. Smith’s successor, Nancy Dubuc, apparently turned Vice’s work culture inside out. But even she did not manage to reach the sales targets until her departure in 2023. Vice Media had recently repeatedly cut jobs to save costs. The company recently announced that it would discontinue its news program Vice News Tonight and lay off 100 employees worldwide. In the end, Vice apparently didn’t have enough money to pay outstanding bills.

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