When one thinks of Vice Media they often tend to recall their interesting, yet unusual documentaries that kept their audience wanting more. Their loyal fanbase, consisting mainly of curious millennials, were deeply engaged in their societal and cultural news that impacted them. Vice was defined mainly by their focus on the arts, societal cultures, and pressing news topics. They were an escape from the boring black and white political news that constantly graced the internet.
Vice Media debuted VICE News, a current affairs channel with a sole purpose of serving a global youth audience that has been ostracized by formal news agencies. This Vice channel regularly releases engaging documentaries via vice.com or the Vice YouTube channel. Vice prides themselves on being a news agency that covers many “under-reported stories,” and this was true for a period of time. Vice released videos like ‘The Cannibal Generals of Liberia’ in April of 2012, ‘The Farm of Rotting Corpses in Tennessee’ in September of 2011, and ‘Teenage Heroin Epidemic’ in June of 2012. These documentaries gave millennials the chance to learn something they were curious about, but never had the opportunity to; because prior to the release of such videos, they had no knowledge on such issues. Each of these documentaries received millions of views, which is evidence for itself that Vice’s content was captivating.
However, Vice has recently been unable to reach the same viewer count on their more current videos. ‘Paradise Papers: The True Story Behind The Secret Nine-Month Investigation’ was released in 2017 and received less than eight hundred thousand views, another politically centered video: ‘How Truth Lost Its Meaning In Trump’s America’ had approximately four hundred thousand views and was released in 2018, ‘Straight Pride Parade: Marching for the “Oppressed Majority”‘ was posted in 2019 and obtained less than three hundred thousand views. These numbers are a significant drop from the figures that Vice was able to accumulate during their earlier years. The obvious drop can be associated with the shift in content that Vice happens to be producing lately. They focus more on political issues and are slowly turning into the black and white news agencies that their loyal fanbase wanted to steer clear of. Vice News has also recently been described as a left leaning news agency by Media Bias/Fact Check, due to their wording and story selection that moderately favors the left and being high for factual reporting based on proper sourcing.
New York Magazine stated that Vice’s documentary work on HBO and YouTube was a primary factor in amplifying their credibility as a news agency ‘Vice’s approach to filmmaking was novel yet sensible,’ and it happened to be one of the few companies that gave millennials and a young generation of workers significantly more opportunities than any other media source, and gave young people substantially more opportunities. Lately, CNN Business has described Vice’s millennial reach as being under fire. A few years ago, Vice Media was seen as one of a handful of go-to publishers for reaching millennials, and as of late they no longer seem to capture that same audience. This is because Vice is not considered a top primary source of news, but they often try to compete with CNN, FOX and the likes of other significant news sources as they seemingly are changing to a politically focused news agency.
Vice has changed and this does not necessarily take away from their quality of output, but it has affected their reputation, and essentially their fanbase. With the shift from a culture and arts based news source to more politically centered, Vice has joined the many other sites that have shifted priorities like: BuzzFeed, Vox, Gizmodo, and Refinery 29.
Works Cited
“About.” Vice Global, company.vice.com/about/#timeline.
Increasingly. “Vice Media’s Millennial Reach Comes under Scrutiny.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, money.cnn.com/2016/03/22/media/vice-media-audience/index.html.
Johnson, Lauren. “Vice Media Is Cutting Its Staff by up to 15% amid Missed Revenue and a Traffic Slump.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 8 Nov. 2018, www.businessinsider.com/vice-media-layoffs-amid-lower-revenue-and-traffic-slump-2018-11.
Martin, Peter. “Vice Media Was Built on a Bluff. What Happens When It Gets Called?” Intelligencer, 11 June 2018, nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/inside-vice-media-shane-smith.html.
Taube, Aaron. “How Vice Media Will Make $500 Million This Year.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 21 June 2014, www.businessinsider.com/how-vice-will-make-500-million-in-2014-2014-6.
“Vice Media.” Media Bias/Fact Check, mediabiasfactcheck.com/vice-news/.
“Vice.com Traffic Statistics.” SimilarWeb, www.similarweb.com/website/vice.com#similarSites.
I loved this post because it took a unique approach on credibility from a sense of mission statement to actual output, quality. The original intent of Vice was exactly as you said to voice the minds of underrepresented opinions and stories, but as of recently hasn’t been able to live up to this name. I’ve seen this first hand and I do agree that this has given other agencies like Vox an upper hand. I would’ve maybe liked to have seen a bit more on actual legitimacy of work and quality of sources, but other than that good work!
I respect that Vice chooses to cover more stories that are not as known to the public. This ensures that we are truly being informed by more than what’s simply going on in the political field. It seems that for a less popular news organization to succeed, they have to stand out by staying away from posting the major headlines. I think that Vice should go back to releasing more pop culture material because the news site I analyzed, Vox, does just that and their viewership is increasing. Some people also tend to appreciate a break from the political news and would like to read something more mindless about today’s society.
I don’t follow Vice very closely so I still kind of assumed that they were still making the 2012-style stuff. It makes sense that they’re not doing great financially, since they basically abandoned the fanbase for their work on underreported issues and switched to covering the Paradise Papers, which literally already won a Pulitzer Prize. You did a really good job explaining this in a simple, logical way.