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Deputy CEO bruce dixon The company made a shocking announcement Thursday that the once high-flying media company plans to stop publishing content on its website and lay off “hundreds” of employees as part of a major restructuring of its business. I spoke to the employees who received the information.
“After careful consideration and discussion with our board of directors, we have decided to make fundamental changes to Vice’s strategic vision,” Dixon said in an email to staff Thursday afternoon. “It’s no longer cost-effective to distribute digital content the way we used to,” Dixon said, adding that Vice would “partner” with other media companies to distribute content and “move completely to a studio model.” I will,” he explained.
“As part of this transition, we will no longer publish content on vice.com,” he said. Dixon said that as part of the shift away from news, Vice will be “cutting hundreds of positions” and will notify those affected early next week. Currently, Vice has fewer than 1,000 employees worldwide.
The surprising announcement comes hours after rumors spread that the troubled company, once hailed as the future of digital media and worth billions of dollars, was planning to delete its entire website. It was conducted.
Sources told Mediaite that Vice employees received an anonymous tip Wednesday night telling them to back up their articles because the website was scheduled to be taken down. Panic began, officials said, and things got worse on Thursday when the company cut off employees’ ability to download email.
Dixon and senior executives declined to answer questions about the site’s future throughout Wednesday. “The CEO and senior executives have not taken the opportunity to deny the rumors on multiple occasions, which is bad,” said one staffer. “They have received questions from editorial leadership but have not responded.”
“Apocalyptic,” they said.
Employees had hoped for some clarification at a weekly press conference at noon Thursday, but received none. Those attending the meeting were thrown into confusion.
One Vice staffer said: “I’m worried that if the site just shuts down, we’ll all lose our jobs.” Senior management is aware that people have these fears, but… , not addressing it.”
In the end, fears that the site would be shut down did not materialize. Vice did not respond to a request for comment.
Vice was founded in Montreal, Canada in 1994 as a punk magazine covering music and other subcultures. The magazine’s covers often favored nudity, drugs, and blood. By 2017, Vice had grown into a vast media empire with a website, a television and production division, and an advertising agency. A funding round from private equity firm TPG, which regularly invests in media assets, valued Vice at $5.7 billion.
Then everything fell apart. The company’s once-flourishing media business, which gave its CEO a $23 million mansion, struggled to turn a profit and an unfavorable environment for digital media hastened its demise. Last year, Vice filed for bankruptcy. In July, the former lenders acquired the company for a value of $350 million. A series of layoffs continued in November.
Vice’s surprising decline comes at a time when the entire media industry has been hurt by the downturn in the advertising market. Messenger, a digital media startup that raised $50 million in funding and hired hundreds of reporters, ran out of money just eight months after it was founded and shut down earlier this year. The entire site was taken offline, and the journalists working there were unable to access their articles.
This story has been updated with new information.
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