Vice Media Group is making drastic changes in the face of financial difficulties.
In a memo to Vice employees Thursday, CEO Bruce Dixon said the company will be cutting “several hundred” jobs in the next week.
As part of its major restructuring, Vice will discontinue publishing content on its own website, Vice.com, and will instead put “more emphasis on our social channels as we accelerate our discussions with partners to take our content to where it will be viewed most broadly,” Dixon wrote in the memo.
“We create and produce outstanding original content true to the Vice brand. However, it is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously. Moving forward, we will look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model,” the CEO continued.
Dixon also wrote that Vice Media Group is “in advanced discussions” to sell Refinery29, the women-focused media company it bought in 2019 in a reported $400 million deal.
The company — which was once valued at $5.7 billion in its go-go years — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year and in July 2023 closed a $350 million sale to a group of its former lenders, Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital.
Last fall, Vice made another round of layoffs after several Vice News shows failed to get renewed, and consolidated its five operating divisions down to two. After those cuts, Vice Media had over 900 employees worldwide; at one point, it had about 3,000.
Dixon, formerly Vice Media Group’s CFO, was named co-CEO of the company alongside former chief strategy officer Hozefa Lokhandwala one year ago after the exit of former chief exec Nancy Dubuc. Lokhandwala left the company in December.
Read Dixon’s Feb. 22 memo:
Dear Vice Team,
As we navigate the ever-evolving business landscape, we need to adapt and best align our strategies to be more competitive in the long term. After careful consideration and discussion with the board, we have decided to make some fundamental changes to our strategic vision at Vice.
We create and produce outstanding original content true to the Vice brand. However, it is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously. Moving forward, we will look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model. As part of this shift, we will no longer publish content on vice.com, instead putting more emphasis on our social channels as we accelerate our discussions with partners to take our content to where it will be viewed most broadly.
Source: https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/vice-cease-publishing-layoff-hundreds-ceo-1235919843/