Case study: Vice Enders Analysis 46A Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7JW +44 207 851 0900 Overview [email protected] Vice is a mostly online media organisation, which produces articles and videos August 2014 dealing with niche topics in an immersive and in-depth fashion. The original magazine was founded in Canada and the organisation is based in New York, but there are dedicated regional operations in 20 regions, including the UK. Vice news story [Source: Vice] Vice distinguishes itself from other media services largely through the type of content it produces. Rather than aiming for the completeness of a newspaper or the depth of a specialist magazine, Vice aims to cover the sort of weird and wonderful stories which other organisations do not, or to go to the sort of extremes others are not prepared to in pursuit of a story, or to cover a story from a unique angle. Examples of the first are features like “Meet the UK’s ‘Most Expensive Male Escort’”, and “Exploring Japan’s Secluded Grime Scene”. Examples of the second include their five-part video series on the Islamic State, where a Vice News reporter was given access to members and meetings of the organisation, as well as pieces such as ‘My Weird Dinner Party at Bolivia’s Cocaine Prison’. Through its various operations, Vice fulfils PSO1, by presenting and reviewing music and producing comedy pieces, PSO2, by reporting on current events, PSO3 through Vice Sports and Munchies, their food site. It also fulfils PSO5 through in- depth informational pieces on social issues, science and special interests. Finally, they fulfil PSO8 through representation and discussion of LGBT culture as well as local and regional concerns. Background and context Vice magazine was founded in Montreal in 1994, with a website following two years later. In 2007 Vice launched the video site VBS.TV. The operations were merged under Vice.com in 2011. Vice Media co-founder and CEO Shane Smith described the aim of the magazine in interview with the Guardian: ‘we wanted to be the first international voice for the universality of youth sub-culture’.1 Since its launch as a magazine, Vice has become a huge global media organisation, with visitor numbers in the hundreds of millions. In 2013, 21st Century Fox bought 5% of Vice Media in a $70 million deal, cementing its status as a big player in online media. Part of the context Vice sits in is that due to the zero marginal cost to a publisher of distributing anywhere in the world online, even what was a ‘sub- culture’ or ‘alternative’ can reach the kind of scale traditional media could only dream of. Vice Media has over the years grown to include a record label, TV production studio, a book publishing division, a creative agency, and a pub in East London, reflecting the eclectic concerns of the core business. Online, Vice is currently in a period of rapid expansion of its media offerings. In 2014 alone, it has launched Vice News, Vice Sports and Munchies (its food channel). Channels on travel, gaming, photography and comedy are currently in the works. Vice is cross-platform, with its content distributed across YouTube, Tumblr and other platforms. With consumption habits and social and discovery platforms vulnerable to rapid change, concentrating on promoting the content and brand above driving traffic to Vice.com looks to be a smart move. It is an approach favoured by certain other media companies, such as Fusion,2 while most use alternative platforms as a way of routing traffic to their central site. One reason Vice is able to do this is commercial: it relies less on display ad revenue and more on its content as a sponsorship opportunity and as a showcase for brands of the sort of popular, shareable content it can produce. From a sponsor’s point of view, the more locations the content can be seen in, and the more pervasive the brand awareness, the better. This approach has raised concerns around sponsoring brands influencing content decisions,3 which have unsurprisingly been dismissed by Vice executives.4 Content strategy Vice has several forms of output, including photo galleries, news videos, and articles about the writers’ personal experiences. The common themes throughout its offerings are 1) it targets a young demographic and 2) it is not like other media: it covers subjects others do not, in a casual editorial voice others avoid. This approach means that the range of subjects its output deals with is exceptionally broad, from neuropsychology to pornography. 1 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/mar/30/pressandpublishing.tvandradioarts 2 http://fusion.net/ A TV and digital network from Univision and ABC, currently in beta. 3 http://gawker.com/working-at-vice-media-is-not-as-cool-as-it-seems-1579711577 4 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/02/vice-media-shane-smith-north-korea 2 | 7 Case study: Vice August 2014 Perhaps the ‘archetypal’ Vice piece is a gonzo journalism-style account of an outrageous situation or experience. Examples such as “The Kentucky Derby… On Acid!”, “I Went Undercover in America’s Toughest Prison” and “Making Friends Inside Brooklyn’s Last Porno Theatre” give an idea of the sort of content Vice is known for. These tend to be a couple of thousand words of text, usually accompanied by photos from the event in question. Video is central to Vice’s output, and Vice has been putting video online longer than most media companies. The main Vice channel on YouTube has uploaded 1,276 videos,5 and these range from one-minute comedy videos to half-hour or longer in-depth documentaries on subjects such as Ukraine Fashion Week. Vice News on YouTube has so far uploaded 533 videos. These include 3-minute daily news briefings, as well as much more involved videos such as the 40 minute report on the Islamic State. One of Vice News’ innovations compared to traditional news organisations is that it also frequently produces ‘raw coverage’ videos, which are hours of unedited footage from areas of instability streamed live and then uploaded alongside the edited news stories. Contribution to Public Service Objectives PSO1 – Cultural activity Vice showcases and reviews music, primarily through Noisey, its music media channel, and Thump, its electronic music channel. Vice UK’s content includes comedy, such as an animated guide to “How Guys Should Greet Each Other in 2014”. It also showcases the work of UK artists, primarily photographers. Vice article [Source: Vice] PSO2 – News and current affairs Vice has a dedicated news channel, Vice News, where videos and articles report and comment on current affairs. The brand has carried its ‘immersionist’ philosophy into the newsroom, sending back regular frontline dispatches from conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and Gaza. Indeed, Vice News has made the news 5 Correct as at 18/08/2014 3 | 7 Case study: Vice August 2014 through this approach, when insurgents in Ukraine captured its correspondent Simon Ostrovsky. Vice news article [Source: Vice] On top of this traditional newsroom activity of reporting on stories of global significance, Vice News sees its brief partly as ‘shining a light on underreported stories’. To this end they carry stories such as “Sweden Plans to Thwart Racism By Eliminating the Mention of Race From Its Laws” and “A Volcano of Garbage in the Arctic Has Been Burning For Eight Weeks”. This approach also expresses itself in Vice’s unusual angles on mainstream stories, such as a story on how Crimean heroin addicts suffered from the change in drug treatment policy after the region’s annexation by Russia. PSO3 – Sports and leisure Vice Sports was launched in June 2014 as a dedicated sports channel. This largely covers sports from a US perspective, and given the lack of overlap between the sporting concerns of the US and UK populations, much of the content is of limited interest to a UK audience. However, there is still sufficient content to satisfy PSO3, even if this is often written from a non-UK perspective (e.g. “NBC Is Betting Big on British Soccer”, or “An Englishman Explains Cricket to a Clueless American”). Vice also caters for other leisure interests. Munchies, its food channel, contains recipes as well as news and information about food and restaurants. Fashion has long been an area of concern for Vice. There is a fashion section within the main website as well as a dedicated channel, i-D, a fashion magazine acquired by Vice and in which the Vice branding is much less apparent than in its other channels. PSO5 – Factual Vice produces factual content on various PSO-relevant subjects. Motherboard is a largely technology-concerned channel, which includes articles and videos dealing with scientific subjects (e.g. “What Summer is Like on Saturn’s Moon Titan”). Religion is an occasional subject of pieces, such as “Meeting Nepal’s Living Goddesses”, and “Exploring the Evangelist Churches of East London’s Industrial Estates”. Social issues are frequently dealt with, with pieces from Vice News such as “US Justice Is Racist, and the UN Is Powerless to Change It”. 4 | 7 Case study: Vice August 2014 PSO8 – Communities and regional Vice produces a range of material dealing with the concerns of different communities. Its UK operation publishes pieces that reflect local areas, such as “A Love Letter to Margate”. Its output on other topics often has a local angle, such as “The Peckham Sapeurs” in fashion and a video series about Scottish cuisine, “MUNCHIES Guide to Scotland” LGBT issues are a common topic, with articles like “Life in the Closet as a Member of a London Gang” and “Why the Gaming Industry Plans to Keep Gay Characters on the Sidelines”.