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The Journal.

The Downfall of Vice

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Business News, News, Daily News

4.25.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Vice Media was a digital-media pioneer, built on provocative journalism and the promise of reaching younger audiences, a boon for advertisers. In its heyday, the company was valued at $5.7 billion. But last week, Vice Media said it would stop publishing content on its website and plans to cut hundreds of jobs. WSJ’s Keach Hagey and Alexandra Bruell on the rise and fall of Vice. Further Reading: - Vice Media to Stop Publishing on Vice.com, Plans to Cut Hundreds of Jobs - Vice Media to Be Acquired Out of Bankruptcy by Fortress, Soros Fund - Essence in Talks to Buy Refinery29 From Embattled Publisher Vice Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Do you remember the first time you encountered Vice or Vice magazine in the real world?

0:11.0

Oh yes, so I lived in Williamsburg in early 2000s. That's our

0:16.2

colleague Kichhagi. And so I'd be walking down Bedford Avenue in

0:20.0

Williamsburg and there would be stacks of Vice magazines pretty much inside the door of every business.

0:25.6

For more than a decade, Vice has been a major player in the world of online news.

0:34.0

But Keats remembers it before it got big,

0:36.0

back when it was still just an indie magazine.

0:40.0

You know, they would have do's and don'ts,

0:42.0

which were just like these candid photographs of people in the neighborhood

0:47.2

wearing fashion choices that they would then rate is was it a do or was it a don't and it was like written in this like

0:53.6

savage tone please tell me you were the subject of one of these do or don't

0:58.9

photos like they had your picture in the magazine no No, thankfully I escaped that, although it was definitely

1:05.3

wearing some questionable things at the time. At first, Kiech says Vice was more of a

1:12.3

punk magazine, more sex,

1:14.4

drugs and rock and roll, and it tried to be as shocking as possible.

1:18.5

And over the years, as they

1:25.0

got into a legitimate journalism outlet. They would do very brave and sometimes crazy things.

1:29.0

We're in Moscow to find out what it's like

1:31.0

to be young and gay in Putin's Russia.

1:33.0

Over the past few years female-friendly erotica has become increasingly more popular in Japan.

1:38.0

I'm smoking weed with the president of Uruguay at his farm outside of Montevideo.

1:42.0

Vice pioneered a style of journalism

...

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