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Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

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Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#61

Post by mzs »

Reedx wrote: post #14

IIRC, I was introduced to Vice with their fascinating coverage of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4 (first trip - Shane Smith was banned from the country as a result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCQh1usdzE (second trip years later, where they got in under the guise of a Basketball game) Unfortunately it's been increasingly hit or miss ever since and now their process seems to be along thes…

McClatchy offers buy-outs to 10% today as well.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/mcclatchy-follows-buzzfee...

I have a sense that big waves like this are a leading indicator for market as a whole.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#62

Post by chipotle_coyote »

dleslie wrote: post #25
52-6F-62 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening in Canada as well. They're just not making enough money. They're making money, but not enough. There's a large drive to produce more with less, and to reboot. Journalism, especially good journalism, is expensive. Expensive to execute, and expensive to produce. And everybody wants it for free now.

Vice was cheap to run, for a time. It started as a niche magazine in Quebec and expanded into yellow journalism with cheap to make, but provocative, YouTube documentaries. Then it was acquired and it pivoted sharply into being a media and news portal, with a presence on nigh every platform. The content quickly expanded in quantity, and critically overloaded itself in trying to dominate online discussion in every spac…

> Then it was acquired

By who? The Wikipedia article on Vice Media says they were acquired in 1999--without listing who the acquirers were--but also says that the cofounders bought it back in 2001. All of the pivoting you're talking about appears to have happened under the original management, in any case, didn't it? They've had investment from a bunch of "old media" companies over the years, but original founder Shane Smith retained a controlling interest. (It looks like Disney will own more of the company than he does once their merger with Fox is completed.)

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#63

Post by dleslie »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #62
dleslie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice was cheap to run, for a time. It started as a niche magazine in Quebec and expanded into yellow journalism with cheap to make, but provocative, YouTube documentaries. Then it was acquired and it pivoted sharply into being a media and news portal, with a presence on nigh every platform. The content quickly expanded in quantity, and critically overloaded itself in trying to dominate online discussion in every spac…

> Then it was acquired By who? The Wikipedia article on Vice Media says they were acquired in 1999--without listing who the acquirers were--but also says that the cofounders bought it back in 2001. All of the pivoting you're talking about appears to have happened under the original management, in any case, didn't it? They've had investment from a bunch of "old media" companies over the years, but original founder Sha…

It's not an acquisition, per se, so much as some of it was acquired and the leadership changed at a time that major changes were being undertaken.

At a time when the executive controlled roughly 3/4 of Vice, Fox purchased 5% of it; other major media have done so. Shortly before this occurance, Gavin McInnes had left his leadership role over alleged differences of opinion on how to run Vice Media.

His departure, the arrival of large media conglomerates as large minority shareholders, and the rapid expansion of Vice into new properties and markets all occur within a very short time span.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#64

Post by protomyth »

oftenwrong wrote: post #13
hahla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep abreast of these sort of appropriations that are passed?

https://congress.gov/resources/display/content/Appropriation... Also you can get notifications of updates via email or RSS: https://updates.loc.gov/accounts/USLOC/subscriber/new?topic_... https://www.congress.gov/rss/appropriations.xml

and remember to follow it to the end with https://www.federalregister.gov/ to see the final regulations, grant requests, and final distributions

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#65

Post by smacktoward »

hemantv wrote: post #54

Is it just me or there is lay off every other day. Tesla, Buzzfeed etc. This does not seem like a economy at its peak. It seems like a contraction.

As someone who lived through both the original dot-com crash and the crash of the housing bubble, let me provide some reassurance: if we hit a real contraction, you will not feel like you need to ask anyone if that's what's happening.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#66

Post by oskkejdjdkjd »

Vice is completely biased and it makes me happy to imagine snarky vice people being laid off. I hope that these layoffs are a sign that the clickbait model of journalism is failing. I would gladly pay for my news if it werent biased. But I haven’t found a news firm that is free of bias, not even the economist is.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#67

Post by Bartweiss »

Reedx wrote: post #14

IIRC, I was introduced to Vice with their fascinating coverage of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4 (first trip - Shane Smith was banned from the country as a result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCQh1usdzE (second trip years later, where they got in under the guise of a Basketball game) Unfortunately it's been increasingly hit or miss ever since and now their process seems to be along thes…

> how is it that so many of these media companies are having layoffs at almost exactly the same time? You'd think it'd be more scattered...

I've been wondering this myself.

One possibility is that lots of companies had layoffs proposed/planned, and they've accelerated their schedules to be part of the "wave". Better for investor confidence to be one more name in a followup story than to be your own headline.

Another is that the October-onwards stock drop eroded the prospects of a lot of borderline companies all at once. I'd be a bit surprised by both the timing (well into the rally) and the ownership range (everything from private founder-owned to private Disney-owned to public) though.

Third, I suppose, is that they didn't have them planned but saw an opportunity. If you lay off 10% of your staff in isolation, you might well lose another 5-10% of the best people who go find safer jobs. But if there's a clear industry crunch, it becomes a more appealing way to balance the budget because you can deflect the anger and resignations that otherwise come along with layoffs.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#68

Post by IAmEveryone »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #60
dleslie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice was cheap to run, for a time. It started as a niche magazine in Quebec and expanded into yellow journalism with cheap to make, but provocative, YouTube documentaries. Then it was acquired and it pivoted sharply into being a media and news portal, with a presence on nigh every platform. The content quickly expanded in quantity, and critically overloaded itself in trying to dominate online discussion in every spac…

That's interesting, I would have thought the costs associated with printing a paper magazine would be fairly high compared with digital distribution, though?

It’s rather meaningless compared to what the newsroom costs.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#69

Post by 52-6F-62 »

dleslie wrote: post #32
52-6F-62 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice isn't cheap to run, now, though. And that last statement is a lot of conjecture. Unless you have proof of some conspiracy to dominate online discussion in every space. They do cover a wide variety of subjects, only a couple of which I've read—and they seem generally good, with the odd very good piece. Most media companies run a small gamut of niche categories: lifestyle, fashion, news, business, tech, finance, e…

I think their rapid expansion of properties, some enormous, after 2010 speaks for itself. [0] 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Media#Properties

Then I guess we just disagree, and it's more a matter of opinion than it is a fact.

Re: Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

#70

Post by drankula3 »

smacktoward wrote: post #65
hemantv wrote: post #54

Is it just me or there is lay off every other day. Tesla, Buzzfeed etc. This does not seem like a economy at its peak. It seems like a contraction.

As someone who lived through both the original dot-com crash and the crash of the housing bubble, let me provide some reassurance: if we hit a real contraction, you will not feel like you need to ask anyone if that's what's happening.

A bubble popping and a contraction are different things.
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