Vice has done some interesting work over the years but it always came across as if they were explicitly trying to be anti establishment - a bit try hard. Lately it’s just been a clickbait factory...
Vice has done some interesting work over the years but it always came across as if they were explicitly trying to be anti establishment - a bit try hard.
Lately it’s just been a clickbait factory though. Look at their homepage right now:
10 Ways to Begin Doing Something
Drunk People Tell Us the Pettiest Thing They've Ever Done
How to Cope with a Break-Up Without Just Getting Wasted All the Time
They still occasionally do really interesting and wild pieces like they did in the old days, but yeah, I think they exhausted their backlog of them and there simply aren't that many NEW things...
They still occasionally do really interesting and wild pieces like they did in the old days, but yeah, I think they exhausted their backlog of them and there simply aren't that many NEW things like that to cover.
The real issue I think though was that they took a bunch of money from investors and tried to grow way too big and fast. If they had stayed a bit smaller and more self contained, they probably would have been fine, but investors demand infinite growth and when your business model is covering weird niches there isn't really a lot of opportunity for growth in that sector, so they had to branch out to a million other, less successful things.
I hate when a cool, specific piece of media blows up and suddenly they always HAVE to become some kind of giant all-encompassing media empire. CEOs never seem to be satisfied with simple, clean success, they always need like... world domination or something.
Vice doesn't market itself as a typical news source, so I don't think that matters too much. In response to @EgoEimi, their reporting serves a certain niche and, even if they are getting less...
Vice doesn't market itself as a typical news source, so I don't think that matters too much. In response to @EgoEimi, their reporting serves a certain niche and, even if they are getting less traffic as they perhaps used to or are having trouble monetizing their work, I would say they are still taken seriously on a certain range of topics.
You can still find good content on Vice in the same way that there was still good content on Buzzfeed until its end, despite the fact that they're rather questionable as whole. Their public...
You can still find good content on Vice in the same way that there was still good content on Buzzfeed until its end, despite the fact that they're rather questionable as whole. Their public perception took a negative turn.
From what I understand, it mainly boils down to one of two camps. Generally, almost everyone agrees that they used to do good reporting, and many people agree that they still do SOME good...
Exemplary
From what I understand, it mainly boils down to one of two camps. Generally, almost everyone agrees that they used to do good reporting, and many people agree that they still do SOME good reporting, but there are two groups of complaints about the rest of their output:
-One is that their new content is too content-farmy and clickbaity. I personally would agree with this and find it hard to argue against if you just look at their homepage. However, this is basically the same exact thing that EVERY news homepage has done, and also, if you just watch their youtube channel or read the magazine or whatever, there is very little fluff there, it's only on their online print media, which is nearly a dead art form at this point anyways.
-The other, which seems to be the more prevalent one among people who loudly decry that "Vice used to be good, now it's shit" is that the magazine has now, and has always had, an anti-establishment, leftist slant to it. Now, back in the early 2000s, this mostly manifested as them being pretty edgy and reporting on crazy, little known things that would make your mother clutch her pearls, which I think these people agreed with and liked.
Nowadays that type of thing has fallen out of favor in leftist circles though, and the focus is more on social issues like gender and race. Vice does a lot of (In my opinion) very balanced (but still from a leftist perspective) reporting on gender and race issues, especially those in the US. A lot of these videos heavily feature trans, non-binary, or minority peoples with very anti-establishment opinions and appearances (dyed hair, piercings, etc). And as you can imagine, without opening up that whole discussion, this rubs some people the wrong way. As I said, this seems to be the thing that most people who point to Vice's downfall are trying to refer to, especially if they seem slippery and avoidant about actually saying it out loud.
Personally, I think you can dislike the subject matter if you want, but I find that all of their video reporting has maintained a very consistent (even rising) level of quality over the past decade. Their print media is definitely a clickbait farm at least partially, but there is still definitely a core of very talented and passionate journalists there, who do some really important and informative reporting, which is why I still follow them.
I think clickbait, or at least the old styles of Buzzfeed-esque clickbait, is becoming a lot less effective than it used to be. Everybody has a limit of how many times they will get burned by a...
However, this is basically the same exact thing that EVERY news homepage
I think clickbait, or at least the old styles of Buzzfeed-esque clickbait, is becoming a lot less effective than it used to be. Everybody has a limit of how many times they will get burned by a misleading title, and I think the audience for this content has been exhausted.
Anecdotally, I think I see far less clickbait than I did 5-10 years ago although this may be from my internet habits changing. I posit Buzzfeed and Vice are failing not because they've changed, but that their audience has grown wise to the jig.
I found Veritsaium's video on clickbait very interesting. The main point he makes is that clickbait is a spectrum, and there's a balance to strike between bland and interesting, while also...
I found Veritsaium's video on clickbait very interesting. The main point he makes is that clickbait is a spectrum, and there's a balance to strike between bland and interesting, while also considering that the content still needs to encourage clicks in some way to get people to watch it and as a result make money.
You could apply an Exemplary label for that. ;) Edit: LOL... well played, whoever Exemplaried this comment. I guess I'll Exemplary the above comment myself then.
Exemplary
You could apply an Exemplary label for that. ;)
Edit: LOL... well played, whoever Exemplaried this comment. I guess I'll Exemplary the above comment myself then.
Vice, which had wooed media giants, has struggled to adjust to the punishing realities of digital publishing. A group of creditors could buy Vice for $225 million.
Vice Media filed for bankruptcy on Monday, punctuating a yearslong descent from a new-media darling to a cautionary tale of the problems facing the digital publishing industry.
The bankruptcy will not interrupt daily operations for Vice’s businesses, which in addition to its flagship website include the ad agency Virtue, the Pulse Films division and Refinery29, a women-focused site acquired by Vice in 2019.
A group of Vice’s lenders, including Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management, is in the leading position to acquire the company out of bankruptcy. The group has submitted a bid of $225 million, which would be covered by its existing loans to the company. It would also take over “significant liabilities” from Vice after any deal closes.
A sale process follows next. The lenders have secured a $20 million loan to continue operating Vice and then, if a better bid does not emerge, the group that includes Fortress and Soros will acquire Vice.
I thought being bankrupt meant you had no money, so cannot continue operating. Is it just they think they are going to have no money soon? So this reads like the people who lent Vice money some...
Vice Media filed for bankruptcy on Monday [...] The bankruptcy will not interrupt daily operations for Vice’s businesses
I thought being bankrupt meant you had no money, so cannot continue operating. Is it just they think they are going to have no money soon?
A group of Vice’s lenders, including Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management, is in the leading position to acquire the company out of bankruptcy. The group has submitted a bid of $225 million, which would be covered by its existing loans to the company.
The lenders have secured a $20 million loan to continue operating Vice
So this reads like the people who lent Vice money some time ago are going to use the money they lent Vice, to buy Vice - but have borrowed other money (presumably from someone else) in order to run Vice once they've bought it using money they've already given to Vice, money which Vice have presumably spent already, otherwise they wouldn't be bankrupt now?
They have more debt than money, but they still have money. Bankruptcy, depending on type, usually is just a way of negating the debt and not hurting the money. Some forms require managing your...
They have more debt than money, but they still have money. Bankruptcy, depending on type, usually is just a way of negating the debt and not hurting the money. Some forms require managing your relationship with your creditors, like Vice has to. It's pretty common for businesses to file for that to stay operating with the assets they have, and comes with a requirement to settle with their creditors, usually by selling or restructuring.
Bankruptcy means that you unable, or unexpect to be unable, to produce the cash flow necessary to meet your financial obligations. This can mean straight forward debt, like corporate paper, or...
Bankruptcy means that you unable, or unexpect to be unable, to produce the cash flow necessary to meet your financial obligations. This can mean straight forward debt, like corporate paper, or things like leases or payroll. On a conceptual level, it's when your debts exceed your assets, but realistically, properly valuing assets is basically impossible, so it's not particularly useful.
Large companies usually at least try chapter 14 bankruptcy in the US, which is more of a distress signal, and in effect the company negotiates with debtors to reformat their obligations such that the company can continue (and usually less burdened in their day-to-day operations by said debt), with the intention that liquidating the company immediately would produce more loss than having the company.
So a group of the organizations that lent money to Vice, are using their loaned money to vice to claim ownership over vice. So now they own Vice. The $225m loaned to Vice from them basically doesn't exist anymore. So Vice is free from that debt (in exchange for being owned by them).
As the owners of Vice, Vice does not have money, so they secure corporate loans under Vice (not the Soros Fund Management) to meet obligations like payroll and rent.
That's a pity, I really enjoyed their Muchies Series, particularly the guide series and Chef's night out Also their reporting during the rise of ISIS was incredible. They still have some pretty...
It sounds like they will continue to exist Obviously I would expect layoffs, no expansions, and cutting some programs but they will exist.
It sounds like they will continue to exist
The bankruptcy will not interrupt daily operations for Vice’s businesses, which in addition to its flagship website include the ad agency Virtue, the Pulse Films division and Refinery29, a women-focused site acquired by Vice in 2019.
Obviously I would expect layoffs, no expansions, and cutting some programs but they will exist.
Vice has done some interesting work over the years but it always came across as if they were explicitly trying to be anti establishment - a bit try hard.
Lately it’s just been a clickbait factory though. Look at their homepage right now:
I think that after they ran out of secretive authoritarian countries to tour and semen cocktail recipes, things just got boring.
They still occasionally do really interesting and wild pieces like they did in the old days, but yeah, I think they exhausted their backlog of them and there simply aren't that many NEW things like that to cover.
The real issue I think though was that they took a bunch of money from investors and tried to grow way too big and fast. If they had stayed a bit smaller and more self contained, they probably would have been fine, but investors demand infinite growth and when your business model is covering weird niches there isn't really a lot of opportunity for growth in that sector, so they had to branch out to a million other, less successful things.
I hate when a cool, specific piece of media blows up and suddenly they always HAVE to become some kind of giant all-encompassing media empire. CEOs never seem to be satisfied with simple, clean success, they always need like... world domination or something.
E.g. Motherboard / their tech section is still good in my opinion.
Vice doesn't market itself as a typical news source, so I don't think that matters too much. In response to @EgoEimi, their reporting serves a certain niche and, even if they are getting less traffic as they perhaps used to or are having trouble monetizing their work, I would say they are still taken seriously on a certain range of topics.
Maybe in certain segments people still listen to what they have to say? I’m not in any of those demographics, so I can’t speak to that.
You can still find good content on Vice in the same way that there was still good content on Buzzfeed until its end, despite the fact that they're rather questionable as whole. Their public perception took a negative turn.
What is considered questionable about Vice? I don't follow them too closely, but I haven't personally noticed any issues with the reporting.
From what I understand, it mainly boils down to one of two camps. Generally, almost everyone agrees that they used to do good reporting, and many people agree that they still do SOME good reporting, but there are two groups of complaints about the rest of their output:
-One is that their new content is too content-farmy and clickbaity. I personally would agree with this and find it hard to argue against if you just look at their homepage. However, this is basically the same exact thing that EVERY news homepage has done, and also, if you just watch their youtube channel or read the magazine or whatever, there is very little fluff there, it's only on their online print media, which is nearly a dead art form at this point anyways.
-The other, which seems to be the more prevalent one among people who loudly decry that "Vice used to be good, now it's shit" is that the magazine has now, and has always had, an anti-establishment, leftist slant to it. Now, back in the early 2000s, this mostly manifested as them being pretty edgy and reporting on crazy, little known things that would make your mother clutch her pearls, which I think these people agreed with and liked.
Nowadays that type of thing has fallen out of favor in leftist circles though, and the focus is more on social issues like gender and race. Vice does a lot of (In my opinion) very balanced (but still from a leftist perspective) reporting on gender and race issues, especially those in the US. A lot of these videos heavily feature trans, non-binary, or minority peoples with very anti-establishment opinions and appearances (dyed hair, piercings, etc). And as you can imagine, without opening up that whole discussion, this rubs some people the wrong way. As I said, this seems to be the thing that most people who point to Vice's downfall are trying to refer to, especially if they seem slippery and avoidant about actually saying it out loud.
Personally, I think you can dislike the subject matter if you want, but I find that all of their video reporting has maintained a very consistent (even rising) level of quality over the past decade. Their print media is definitely a clickbait farm at least partially, but there is still definitely a core of very talented and passionate journalists there, who do some really important and informative reporting, which is why I still follow them.
I think clickbait, or at least the old styles of Buzzfeed-esque clickbait, is becoming a lot less effective than it used to be. Everybody has a limit of how many times they will get burned by a misleading title, and I think the audience for this content has been exhausted.
Anecdotally, I think I see far less clickbait than I did 5-10 years ago although this may be from my internet habits changing. I posit Buzzfeed and Vice are failing not because they've changed, but that their audience has grown wise to the jig.
I found Veritsaium's video on clickbait very interesting. The main point he makes is that clickbait is a spectrum, and there's a balance to strike between bland and interesting, while also considering that the content still needs to encourage clicks in some way to get people to watch it and as a result make money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
Label: Well-rounded comment.
You could apply an Exemplary label for that. ;)
Edit: LOL... well played, whoever Exemplaried this comment. I guess I'll Exemplary the above comment myself then.
Well, I just think the choices of label terms needs some more nuances :)
IDK for sure, I'm not one of those that hates Vice. But I've heard many people talking about a reduction in quality.
I thought being bankrupt meant you had no money, so cannot continue operating. Is it just they think they are going to have no money soon?
So this reads like the people who lent Vice money some time ago are going to use the money they lent Vice, to buy Vice - but have borrowed other money (presumably from someone else) in order to run Vice once they've bought it using money they've already given to Vice, money which Vice have presumably spent already, otherwise they wouldn't be bankrupt now?
I do not understand business.
They have more debt than money, but they still have money. Bankruptcy, depending on type, usually is just a way of negating the debt and not hurting the money. Some forms require managing your relationship with your creditors, like Vice has to. It's pretty common for businesses to file for that to stay operating with the assets they have, and comes with a requirement to settle with their creditors, usually by selling or restructuring.
Bankruptcy means that you unable, or unexpect to be unable, to produce the cash flow necessary to meet your financial obligations. This can mean straight forward debt, like corporate paper, or things like leases or payroll. On a conceptual level, it's when your debts exceed your assets, but realistically, properly valuing assets is basically impossible, so it's not particularly useful.
Large companies usually at least try chapter 14 bankruptcy in the US, which is more of a distress signal, and in effect the company negotiates with debtors to reformat their obligations such that the company can continue (and usually less burdened in their day-to-day operations by said debt), with the intention that liquidating the company immediately would produce more loss than having the company.
So a group of the organizations that lent money to Vice, are using their loaned money to vice to claim ownership over vice. So now they own Vice. The $225m loaned to Vice from them basically doesn't exist anymore. So Vice is free from that debt (in exchange for being owned by them).
As the owners of Vice, Vice does not have money, so they secure corporate loans under Vice (not the Soros Fund Management) to meet obligations like payroll and rent.
That's a pity, I really enjoyed their Muchies Series, particularly the guide series and Chef's night out
Also their reporting during the rise of ISIS was incredible. They still have some pretty great recent reporting like on the rise of the right
It sounds like they will continue to exist
Obviously I would expect layoffs, no expansions, and cutting some programs but they will exist.