Shane Smith

How VICE lost its cool

Last week I was at a writers' party in Miami, a city at the cutting edge of tech, finance, the creator economy and nightlife. Naturally the writers were talking about themselves. I asked someone what he would do if he didn’t have to worry about pageviews or proprietors or the other pressing concerns of the modern media. “Think VICE, when it was good,” he replied. To me, VICE when it was good is the girl’s bum on the fiction issue from 2008. It’s Michael Moynihan’s raspy voice reporting from South Korea. It’s the floppy hair of the one super-hot reporter I knew that smoked filterless roll-ups. VICE was where the cool kids at the back of the bus would grow up to write, the place that you would daydream about working for as a young reporter.

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VICE Media is the mausoleum that cool built

Of all the illusions that swarm the contemporary media landscape surely the most spectacular is the notion that VICE has anything to do with journalism. In January they announced a new show for their ailing cable channel VICELAND. Called VICE LIVE the nightly two-hour show will be (mostly) live from VICE’s Williamsburg office, and promises to showcase ‘all things VICE.’ Described by Variety as ‘ambitious’ the new format promises to revolutionize television, which had its first live broadcast in…1926. VICE has been flogging ancient formats to people who should know better since the 1990s. CEO, co-founder and self-anointed ‘Stalin’ Shane Smith is essentially the Jordan Belfort of content production.

vice media