Some of their reports were remarkable, for example "The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia" [1] - that takes courage.
Vice is... well, Vice.
I will miss their dispatches from war zones (I want to say "unfiltered", but they are filtered of course) and their Motherboard (Joseph Cox himself carries Motherboard on his back)
I remember how cool their stuff was ~10 years ago.
Won't miss what they became.
Other longer thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376
Whenever I think of Vice I think of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA
Bummer, I haven't watched much of their more recent stuff, but I absolutely loved their "The Last Week of High School in Gary, Indiana" episode/story.
Really sad about this. Vice went places no one else would go, and did deep dives on topics (drugs) conventional media wouldn't touch.
When Vice's quality went down, did any other independent journalists step into the breach? There are plenty of good analysis channels on YouTube, but I mean actually going into (e.g.) a warzone and reporting from the ground.
Its easy to take the piss out of Vice, but the world would be a much poorer and less informed place without it.
I liked some of their output. Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is an amazing show, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
Do people consider this as a great loss?
I did not liked the sensationalistic format very much, so I avoided them, but they seemed to have done some investigative journalism?
Their employees only unionized 8 years ago. The rapid decline and eventual bankruptcy of a company following unionization is a common pattern.
And unfortunately, the bankrupt company cannot get out of its collective bargaining agreements, making it difficult to find any buyers for its business units.
No more Better Man episodes :(
God what a shame, they put out some really damn good journalism.
Anyone want to try to buy it with me? Might be fun.
Makes me sad. I love their content.
Remember what they did to Naomi Wu (aka. SexyCyborg / https://www.youtube.com/@Naomi-Wu).
Vice's behaviour was unethical at best and Naomi - who is a wonderful tech content creator - got into significant trouble putting her business at serious risk.
Why would you do that as a "journalist"?
https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
[dead]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Some years ago they had a large audience, me included, who got great value out of their investigative journalism. At some point they started pivoting into some weird form of advocacy journalism and clickbait garbage, alienating their existing audience, and apparently failing to find a new one.
Good riddance.