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Vice stood for unfiltered journalism that hurts just to watch. Now the US magazine is bankrupt.
Vice is known for its hard-hitting videos. An example in which the American start-up stuck to it and the images burned into the viewer’s memory: the riots in the US city of Charlottesville in 2017.
Right-wing extremists marched in the small town in Virginia, raised torches into the evening sky and chanted: “Jews will not replace us!” The images were reminiscent of the darkest chapters in history.
Demonstrators stood in the way of the right-wing mob. Several people were run over and a woman died. One protester shouted into Vice’s camera: “They came to get us, we didn’t want them here – they were let here!”
Drugs, cannibals and Islamists
SRF media editor Salvador Atasoy has closely followed the rise and fall of Vice, which started as a punk magazine in Montreal, Canada in 1994 and is now based in New York.
Legend:
Just six years ago, Vice was worth nearly $6 billion. The company was seen as a hip media brand with a great future. The online and print magazine primarily reaches a young audience with its articles and reports.
Keystone/AP/Jae C. Hong
Since then, the portal has caused a stir with disturbing and bizarre reports. “It scored particularly well with two topics on its YouTube channel,” says Atasoy. “It published documentaries about extremely bad new drugs. And Vice was also the first portal to report on the Islamism that emerged in the 2000s – from within.”
Atasoy sees meritorious journalistic work in some reports. “You did this with a new way of telling a story. As unvarnished as possible – but also very uncritical: Participatory journalism that hurts just to watch.”
Somewhere between art and provocation
Vice celebrates itself on its YouTube channel for its “intoxicating and groundbreaking journalism”. “It was initially celebrated as hip, as a new type of gonzo journalism, as shaped by Hunter S. Thompson,” says Atasoy.
In other words: a radical interior view and subjective experience instead of a claim to objectivity and balance. Ultimately, however, the reports from Vice drifted somewhere between art, provocation and sometimes journalism. “But it was never consistently good.”
Legend:
Many reports sent shock waves out into the world. In 2006, warlords in Liberia spoke openly about their inhuman bloody deeds. Other documentaries also took viewers into the abysses of human existence – such as a shockingly candid interview with a Japanese cannibal. Image: Vice journalist on a drug experience trip.
Screenshot Vice
Now Vice is insolvent and is putting himself up for sale. Atasoy sees two main reasons for the magazine’s spectacular failure. “On the one hand, you simply got bogged down.” Vice has recently served a wide range of topics and tastes, from films to fashion journalism. “It became an intricate, complex and unmanageable empire.”
«Imploding from the inside out»
There were also loans and too many debts that the media company had to service: “At some point the calculation simply didn’t add up anymore and Vice practically imploded from the inside out,” estimates Atasoy. In the end, however, it was a downfall with an announcement. Because rumors that Vice is insolvent have been around for months.
Vice is not the only media portal that has recently gotten into trouble. The development is fueled by the online advertising crisis in the USA. Other well-known titles also had to lose feathers: there were layoffs at the renowned “Washington Post”, Buzzfeed had to close its Pulitzer Prize-winning digital news portal.
“The failure of Vice is now the preliminary climax of this crisis,” concludes media expert Atasoy. Now the company is being sold and the business is being restructured. «Stories like: ‹I am a porn star, my partner is not – this is how we have sex› so you will continue to read.”