Vice Will Cease Publishing on Vice.com and Lay Off ‘Several Hundred’ Staffers, CEO Says
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital Editor 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.
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