[HN Gopher] Vice files for Bankruptcy
___________________________________________________________________
Vice files for Bankruptcy
Author : 7ero
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-05-15 07:18 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| trollied wrote:
| I liked some of their output. Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is an
| amazing show, for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
| fergie wrote:
| Its easy to take the piss out of Vice, but the world would be a
| much poorer and less informed place without it.
| commitpizza wrote:
| [flagged]
| roqi wrote:
| > Get woke, go broke.
|
| A quarter of all US newspapers closed since 2005, and they've
| been shutting down at a pace of 2 newspapers per week.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/business/media/local-news...
|
| The same source extrapolates that a third of all US newspapers
| is set to close by 2025.
|
| Do you honestly believe that this bankruptcy wave only affects
| "woke" newspapers?
|
| Also, your "Get woke, go broke" comment is based on the idea
| that if a newspaper you follow starts reporting things you
| don't like or personally agree them protest is a healthy or
| desirable course of action, as if depriving funds from a
| business will eliminate things you don't like or understand.
| I'm not sure this is a healthy take, and is reminiscente of
| extremism.
| lynx23 wrote:
| "Voting with your wallet" isn't particularily unheard of. I
| dont understand why you seem to make a difference here just
| because the topic is leaning a little towards politics.
| grandpoobah wrote:
| Is there a point after which an organisation goes woke, but
| doesn't go broke, that we can say "they probably didn't go
| broke because they went woke"? Because they were "woke" for
| quite a long time.
| slaw wrote:
| There must be some other reasons. Disney and Netflix are doing
| fine while pushing propaganda.
| jelani_t wrote:
| Blackrock
| detrites wrote:
| Disney's share price has halved from its two year high.
| defrost wrote:
| Or, more realitically,
|
| Disney's share price has returned to it's decade long
| steady state after the boom time of lockdown subscriptions
| has passed.
| detrites wrote:
| Positive take. Yet, I doubt anyone who bought shares over
| the last two years shares your enthusiasm.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| Really?
|
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/queen_cleopatra/s01
| pavlov wrote:
| You do understand that riling up right-wing nutjobs is a
| deliberate marketing strategy?
|
| Imagine you're a production company working on a low-budget
| docudrama for Netflix where you know it will be displayed
| as just one more UI tile among an endless tsunami of
| similar low-budget dramas from around the world. Which
| marketing approach do you think would work better:
|
| 1) Make a historically accurate show with the little money
| you have, release it, and watch it sink to oblivion with a
| slightly below average rating;
|
| 2) Add a provocative bait that you know the most bored
| unemployed crowd on Twitter won't be able to resist; watch
| everybody talk about your show; enjoy your 11% rating
| because it came with massive online notoriety and a fat
| Netflix royalty wire for a few months.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| There are just as many nut jobs on the left as there are
| on the right.
| pavlov wrote:
| Of course. Provoking liberals for visibility is a time-
| honored strategy in right-wing media.
| slaw wrote:
| There are not enough right-wing nutjobs. It is strategy
| of insulting thinking humans.
| pavlov wrote:
| There obviously are enough of them because we've heard of
| this Cleopatra docudrama when normally this kind of
| production would have vanished without a trace.
| slaw wrote:
| Yes, Netflix is doing financially very good, considering
| the most of it's movies are shitty.
| keyle wrote:
| ok I'll bite, because I must be missing the bus in the last
| 10 years. Please do tell what propagandas, as in topics, or
| ideas, Netflix and Disney are pushing and so was Vice?
| Thanks.
| slaw wrote:
| You missed the bus.
| keyle wrote:
| Thanks for confirming! I think it's okay to settle down
| and watch the same landscape after a while.
| [deleted]
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Hehe, are you sure, you want to be filled in on the latest
| dystopian woke terrorism?
|
| It is the usual. They propagate homosexuality, gender
| identity, feminism. All the bad stuff. Probably also
| propagation of witchcraft, if you ask more religious
| opponents.
|
| (Seriously, considering Disney as progressive, is very
| weird in my opinion. And I think the person you replied to,
| did not actually think Disney is doing Propaganda, it was a
| mocking statement to the initial post)
| keyle wrote:
| I see. So remakes with women, gay people having roles in
| TV etc. I guess if you're a religious zealot that would
| hurt. I miss the days where you had to be intelligent to
| be on the internet. Sorry, but social media royally
| fucked up humanity into a polarised war of opinions.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Yeah yeah, girls get it done is of course the most
| believable trope ever.
| keyle wrote:
| I'm sorry but they do get it done, just look at your
| mother. It's silly to silo roles based on sex. Embrace
| the differences, you'll live a much happier life, rather
| than being sold the idea of segregation based on
| anything. Segregation sells clicks, it sells views, it
| sells ideas.
|
| As for entertainment, it's entertainment. If you're
| referring to women remakes of films, it's not my cup of
| tea either, it doesn't mean that it's bad entertainment
| and the other half of the planet can enjoy it.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Mentioning my mother in this context is as counter-
| productive as possible. In fact, if it were not for my
| mother, I would give women a bit more slack.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Whatever your mother did or didn't do to you, she gave
| birth to you. That is already something big.
|
| Would you rather her have not done this for you?
|
| Destroying is easy, creating is hard.
|
| (and raising a child in this world is as well)
|
| "if it were not for my mother, I would give women a bit
| more slack."
|
| And whatever happened, you are saying clearly, that
| because of one women, you see all women less. Maybe
| that's not fair?
| lynx23 wrote:
| That is part of the problem. That some people believe
| that getting laid and following through with the
| consequences is actually an acomplishment. It is not, it
| is how nature works. Once that is done, the work actually
| starts, and it starts to become relevant what sort of
| human you are. How much you know, frankly, how
| intelligent you are.
|
| Besides, since you seem to love to trigger me with just
| the "right" sentences: Would you rather
| her have not done this for you?
|
| Yes, now that you ask, I would have prefered if she
| didn't do that. Why that is is a bit too complicated to
| pack into a single reply. Just dont assume that your way
| of seeing things works for others.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Do you think, giving birth is easier, than just taking a
| pill?
|
| For men it is easy to "make babies". For women it isn't.
| They usually sacrifice at least a year for it. You aren't
| really productive, if your brain is a hormon slurry and
| everything hurts. And most women do get lasting injuries
| from the birth, taking years to recover. (have you ever
| sacrifized a year for someone else?)
|
| So it seems, she tried at least. And then maybe
| discovered that she does not have anything more for you.
| Or not much.
|
| That is shitty and not fair. No doubt and sorry to hear
| that.
|
| But that is also how nature works. There is no fairness
| baked in anywhere. In the end life is a gift.
|
| You can take it, or don't.
|
| But if you continiue to choose life, you maybe would be
| better off, if one day you can let go of your anger over
| your childhood trauma of abandonment.
|
| Sometimes things can work out with the old family.
| Sometimes not, but the world is full of people looking
| for a real family.
|
| But a family can only work, if the partners respect and
| trust each other. And sorry if I am crossing a line again
| (I was aware with my question before, what your answer
| likely would be), but I think you would have a major
| struggle with that, with the fear of being abandoned
| again, this time by your partner. Which can easily lead
| to jealousy, pressure, all the usual stuff, breaking up
| and a new generation of half or full abandoned children.
|
| And you might have sworn to yourself, that you would
| never abandon your children - but when you are done, you
| are done. I never thought I could get there, but I was
| close to that point with my children. Kids and everything
| around it, is undescribable intense, unless everything
| was set up perfectly before. And I am not aware of many
| such cases.
|
| Your mother was a human. Faulty, with limited energy,
| understanding and naivity. Likely experienced her
| childhood traumatas.
|
| She tried and failed - partly. Because you _are_ alive
| and _can_ choose now, what you do in this imperfect world
| of ours.
|
| And going back to the original point, maybe, only maybe,
| if your mother as a child would have heard more often
| "girls can do it", instead of "you are just a girl", she
| would have been able to do it the whole way through.
| keyle wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that. Apologies.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I am not sure if I understand you right, but are you
| saying girls are in general less competent?
| lynx23 wrote:
| Nope. I am against the woke trope that "everything is
| better done by a women". Absoulte statements like this
| and the one you tried to imply are always wrong.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| That's why I asked. (even though your other reply to
| keyle, implys otherwise)
|
| And actually, I have not really seen that trope very
| much: "everything is better done by a women"
|
| It surely exists somewhere, but can you give examples for
| this with any major production?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| " Sorry, but social media royally fucked up humanity into
| a polarised war of opinions."
|
| I rather think it made those polarised opinions more
| visible. The divide existed before, extremists on all
| sides just had less broad interaction. Now they read each
| other on the internet and can directly jump on each
| others throat. And with less restraint, than in real
| life, as all semi anonymous.
| keyle wrote:
| That's very true. We've given every village idiot a
| platform to shout out loud world wide.
| dandellion wrote:
| Probably very different audiences to Vice. Most people I know
| who watch a lot of Netflix are the same that used to watch
| cable TV all day. And I'm not sure who exactly are Disney's
| target audience these days, but I don't think it's mature
| adults.
| revelio wrote:
| Disney is very much not doing fine. They just replaced their
| CEO for a reason and they've had a long string of flops, as
| well as having trashed the Star Wars franchise.
| timonoko wrote:
| Quite useful "How to urinate in Public"-video by lovely and
| talented Gavin McInnes has been totally cancelled from
| internets.
|
| It was transphobic, of course, by assuming certain anatomic
| appendices are common among masculines.
| [deleted]
| detrites wrote:
| It amazes me that any major organisation believes pitching
| themselves at a minority group of deniers of the commonly-held
| views of everyone else - that most people therefore find
| abrasive and alienating - makes good business sense.
| soco wrote:
| So you think the minorities don't deserve news outlets and
| opinion platforms? I've been through that already and it was
| behind the iron curtain, welcome back to the old world - I
| definitely didn't expect it to be called "good".
| detrites wrote:
| No. Minorities do not deserve carte blanche control of the
| output of mass communication. That's the most basic enabler
| of authoritarian dictatorship. Under democratic capitalism,
| power must cater to the majority, or lose it/go broke.
|
| It's not a perfect system, and remains susceptible to
| corruption from extremism, but it's historically superior
| to anything else that's been tried. Presumably this is a
| reality you've since enjoyed.
|
| Key - for minorities as much as anyone else - is ensuring
| principles of free speech are upheld. The "woke" crowd have
| generally promoted censorship ("cancelling"), and therefore
| are incompatible with protecting their own rights.
|
| As we're seeing here, with exactly this.
| soco wrote:
| Sorry for nitpicking, but you said "The 'woke' crowd have
| generally promoted censorship ('cancelling')" - but from
| what I can tell it's not the woke crowd banning books
| from schools and libraries, banning certain words from
| education, banning health measures, and I could go on.
| You talk about wokes promoting things, yet ignore the
| others actually _implementing_ bans as we speak? Is this
| gaslighting or what...
| detrites wrote:
| To use an analogy: there's a world of difference between
| scams, spam, opt-in marketing, and an actual, legitimate,
| invited, email message.
|
| Those not wishing to face the difficult and nuanced
| reality of these debates equate these in appeals to
| emotions rather than citing specificity. Not interested
| in any discussion that employs that technique.
|
| What books? Why? What "health" measures? Why? What were
| the arguments for and against? Side-stepping these
| questions is side-stepping the process correct outcomes
| depend on.
|
| Why would someone want to do that?
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| On the surface, you'd appear correct, but if you look at
| the nuance, (a key aspect of critical thinking) you'd be
| wholly mistaken. The books being banned are graphic in
| nature and are not age appropriate, and books that are
| graphic have always been controlled for students. You can
| still buy them, read them in public libraries, but they
| have no place in student libraries because kids are
| MINORS.
|
| A 6th grader should NOT, under any circumstances, be
| taught how to give a blow job by a 400lb man in a dress.
| Sexual content has always been restricted, banned, and
| subject to more scrutiny and control by school boards and
| curriculum.
|
| "banning certain words from education"
|
| The word CUNT is banned in schools. Certain words are not
| age appropriate for school.
|
| Walking around with a dildo strapped to your head is also
| banned in schools. Some things are not appropriate for
| students.
|
| "banning health measures"
|
| Such as what? Abortion? You can still get an abortion. Or
| are you talking about cutting off a young girls breasts
| ...or lopping off a 10 year old's penis because he thinks
| he is a girl?
|
| I mean, yay, stunning... brave... until the kid reaching
| 25 and realizes, gee ...I wish I had my breasts/penis
| ...but there's no going back after such body mutilation.
|
| The latter is not a "health measure" by any means, and
| Hippocrates would dress you down in ancient Greek if you
| tried to make the argument to him.
|
| Books depicting blow jobs, anal sex, and other sexual
| content has always been banned from young eyes. It is
| already against the law to sexualize children, show them
| pornographic content, and groom them UNLESS you're a
| "woke" school district. If the latter, then such woke
| content seemingly takes precedence over math, reading,
| and science.
|
| Students in Loudon County can tell you their pronouns,
| but only half of students have grade-level math
| proficiency. That is abject failure.
|
| Kids should not be groomed or influenced into a
| lifestyle, they should not be indoctrinated to think one
| way or the other. They should be taught the fundamentals,
| how to critically think, and how to be successful.
| Lifestyle is a personal choice and damn those who believe
| it is within their purview to groom kids.
| astine wrote:
| > A 6th grader should NOT, under any circumstances, be
| taught how to give a blow job by a 400lb man in a dress.
|
| Can you show one instance of this actually happening? I'm
| not aware of any and what does get banned seems to be a
| pretty far cry from that sort of thing. Honestly, this
| registers as more of a pretext than a legitimate concern.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| [flagged]
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You have to choose something that isn't imaginary for it
| to count, I think.
| detrites wrote:
| Here's one of the banned books (NSFW warning):
|
| https://alphanews.org/hastings-kids-have-access-to-
| gender-qu...
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| That news source is one with questionable facts that
| caters to a far-right audience. This might as well be
| imaginary.
|
| Do you have something that _actually_ happened, that can
| be verified through more than one source, and doesn 't
| involve giving such a website traffic?
| detrites wrote:
| There's literally videos of these events, look them up.
|
| I don't know anything about that site other than it was
| pretty well-written and had sources and names and times
| and places. You're welcome.
| astine wrote:
| Do you have any examples of this book actually being read
| to children? Otherwise it's still speculation that kids
| are being taught "how to give blowjobs". I have no doubt
| that sexually explicit books on lgbt issues exist, but
| the claim is that they are being targeted at children.
| detrites wrote:
| Do you honestly think a book with a blowjob in it would
| have been banned if it _weren 't_?
|
| Regardless, exactly which "books" presenters with names
| such as "Eric Big Clit", "Flowjob" and "rainbow dildo
| butt monkey" choose to present to children - as young as
| four - strikes me as somewhat beside the point:
|
| https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/05/10/parents-are-
| right-t...
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| This website, along with your last one, caters to a
| fairly right perspective and isn't going to be
| trustworthy either.
| detrites wrote:
| See reply to sibling.
| astine wrote:
| Um. Yes? Considering books like this
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/27/us/tennessee-school-board-
| rem... have also been banned, I'm not super confident in
| the some people's ability to distinguish between genuine
| overstepping of boundaries and stuff they just don't
| agree with.
|
| Thanks for those links BTW. Those events over in Europe
| do appear to be of real concern. But, given the nature of
| the source, it's hard to tell how representative they
| are.
| detrites wrote:
| The county boards statement on that removal seemed pretty
| reasonable to me:
|
| _The McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove
| the graphic novel Maus from McMinn County Schools because
| of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its
| depiction of violence and suicide. Taken as a whole, the
| Board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for
| use in our schools.
|
| We do not diminish the value of Maus as an impactful and
| meaningful piece of literature, nor do we dispute the
| importance of teaching our children the historical and
| moral lessons and realities of the Holocaust. To the
| contrary, we have asked our administrators to find other
| works that accomplish the same educational goals in a
| more age-appropriate fashion. The atrocities of the
| Holocaust were shameful beyond description, and we all
| have an obligation to ensure that younger generations
| learn of its horrors to ensure that such an event is
| never repeated._
|
| Though I would very much agree that censorship of any
| kind is a delicate matter and can easily become heavy-
| handed in exactly the way you describe.
|
| I actually don't know anything about that source. It came
| up in a search and appeared to summarise and provide
| source-links to cases I'd previously seen. It wasn't as
| sensationalist as others so seemed worth including.
|
| Glad you appreciated it. I wasn't able to find something
| that specifically summarised what I've seen from the US,
| but it is out there and was as concerning. Maybe it's a
| bit "boy who cried wolf" with the right in the US on
| this.
|
| That is, while there's often puritanical hyperbole that's
| easier for left to switch off to, the right appear to
| have a valid point most people either side would agree to
| here, but it's maybe not represented well in mainstream
| left media.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that line gets repeated because it rhymes, Your
| brain thinks it is catchy.
|
| It certainly isn't true in general.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| It appears "woke" companies are doing quite well.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/woke-c...
| bearmode wrote:
| God what a shame, they put out some really damn good journalism.
| chmod775 wrote:
| 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.
| fredgrott wrote:
| What happen is that they took market money which means they no
| longer had to be hungry and do good and honest journalism.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| They started edgy (Gavin McInnes was the co-founder), they
| became partisan. I'm no fan of a certain Youtuber, but he
| started at Vice News, and he claims that when the sex
| harassment lawsuits happened, Vice had to make themselves look
| "clean" for investors and so become more "aligned" with the US
| political left and became essentially yet another PAC like Vox
| media or Buzzfeed.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I think you might be confusing "Vice" and "Vice News" the
| former did the off-beat stories and the latter was sending
| correspondents to war zones, etc.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Both are the same organization. There isn't any real
| segmentation between Vice and Vice News like in Buzzfeed
| (have friends who have freelanced for Vice).
|
| That said, a LOT of Vice news itself is freelanced by
| reporters in the middle of their own projects such as
| documentaries, publishing projects, etc.
| yawboakye wrote:
| this is the entire US media at the moment. and even some
| english versions of european newspapers. i follow the football
| league in spain a lot but don't speak spanish. i used to get
| great content from https://marca.com/en--i.e. english version
| of the same newspaper. recently they made a sharp turn into the
| garbage/clickbait-y end so that now i have to rely on browser
| translations of the original spanish at https://marca.com. sad
| what click/eyeball-based advertising has done to web-published
| journals.
| jasmer wrote:
| It was not quite journalism because they didn't really adhere
| to standards though they did dig into issues msm is too lazy or
| narrow to cover and so I think they had a legit voice.
| [deleted]
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| okdood64 wrote:
| I think they've been doing more than fine work recently. Look
| specifically at their VICE News page:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@VICENews/videos
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The core problem is that people don't want to pay for news.
|
| You can see this right here on HN. Just submit a paywalled
| article and the top comment will be a link to the archive.org
| version.
| runjake wrote:
| I want to pay for news, but:
|
| 1. I don't want to pay for what is currently called "news".
| That is, agenda-based editorials and selective fact-choosing.
|
| 2. I want to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe easily,
| from my phone, without dark patterns, or having to talk to a
| human.
|
| The closest thing I have right now is paying for
| https://sumi.news and glancing at headlines.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| "currently called "news"" I don't think humans have ever
| had a source of news free from agendas. At least now you
| can pick the agendas you want.
| tensor wrote:
| I don't mind paying for news, but I don't want fucking ads if
| I'm paying.
| groestl wrote:
| I want to pay for news. I just don't want to pay for every
| news platform there is on this world, searately, because some
| manager somewhere decides that this will push the brand (same
| applies for movies, songs, etc) (not to go against your
| argument, I'm just elaborating on it)
| nequo wrote:
| That's how we used to pay for newspapers though. Cable
| companies use bundling instead and you get a lot of crap
| that you don't need but they price discriminate you into.
| chmod775 wrote:
| You could also hand the newspaper to a friend if you
| wanted to show them an article.
|
| The modern equivalent is sending someone a link, which
| won't work so well.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sure, but how many people subscribed to >2 papers?
|
| Growing up, the family had the Washington Post and
| Economist, plus the nightly news on one of the major
| broadcast stations. Some people might also get the WSJ. I
| can't think of anybody I knew who got more than that.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| I subscribe to >2 papers. Some people even go as far as
| purchasing a Bloomberg terminal to get the news - albeit
| financial - as soon as it hits the wire.
|
| The group who does pay for news, as I've alluded to, are
| people in the financial sector, or those who's knowledge
| of the news affects or is inherent to their job.
|
| Business people, basically.
|
| On a personal note, in high-school I competed on a team
| competition - Academic Decathlon - and my testing subject
| was Current Events. So I may be somewhat outside the
| norm.
|
| I subscribe to the Financial Times, the Economist, WSJ,
| Bloomberg, and more.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Sure, but how many people subscribed to >2 papers?_
|
| My parents may have been more well off so this might not
| be representative, but it wasn't just papers; we also
| subscribed to several magazines. Growing up I remember we
| had:
|
| * New York Times
|
| * Wall Street Journal
|
| * The Economist Magazine
|
| * Time Magazine
|
| * Nintendo Power
|
| * Highlights for Children
|
| I remember my Aunt subscribing to Vogue, Ebony and
| Reader's Digest, on top of the finance publications she
| and my dad were subscribed to. 30 years ago, Vice might
| have existed as a magazine, not a major publication.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| My solution was to subscribe to one reasonable newspaper
| (Washington Post). Between that, free BBC content, and NPR,
| I think I get a reasonable overview of world and local
| news.
|
| But, that does mean I miss breaking investigative news from
| other sources. At least until it's picked up elsewhere or
| made available elsewhere. It's a bummer at time, but paying
| for a large subset of possible news sources would cost 10x+
| what I pay now.
| falafel wrote:
| BBC, NPR and Washington Post are all left leaning
| organizations funded by governments and billionaires. I
| don't know if I would call this "getting a reasonable
| overview of world and local news".
| gamblor956 wrote:
| BBC, NPR, and Washington Post are all neutral
| organizations.
|
| WaPo is the home of neocons Hugh Hewitt and Jennifer
| Rubin. When I first started reading WaPo, they were
| considered (and they considered themselves to be) far
| right neocons. These days, Ms. Rubin would be classified
| as a moderate (and considers herself to be an
| independent) and Mr. Hewitt is frequently accused of
| being a RINO. They haven't changed their political
| stances (if anything, Hewitt is more conservative now
| than he was before); it is simply that the Republican
| Party has moved extremely far to the right in the past
| decade and what was once considered extreme is now
| moderate.
| vlark wrote:
| Media Bias Chart to the rescue:
| https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
| pydry wrote:
| It amuses me when people call the news organization that
| censored booing of Boris Johnson neutral.
|
| The WaPo isnt even neutral by American standards - it has
| an unusually tight knit relationship with the pentagon.
|
| Essentially those 3 organizations provide 3 different
| angles on what the pentagon wants you to hear.
| tatrajim wrote:
| NPR is a "neutral organization"? I suspect that would
| wound the souls of many of the staff there.
|
| See, for example: "New NPR Ethics Policy: It's OK For
| Journalists To Demonstrate (Sometimes)"
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2021/07/29/1021
| 802...
| lostgame wrote:
| ...so...Apple News+?
| mysterydip wrote:
| I think part of the problem is the distributed nature of news
| sources. I don't want to have 20 separate subscriptions to
| different news sources to manage. I would pay for one site if
| I could get all my news there, but a single site a) can't
| cover everything and b) has its own biases.
| ajd1988 wrote:
| It seems like we're living in the era of the 'Netflix
| Paradox' - the more our content gets decentralized - the
| more subscriptions we're expected to manage on our credit
| cards - but, unlike Netflix, there's no 'one size fits all'
| for news for most people.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > unlike Netflix, there's no 'one size fits all'
|
| A gaming would've been a good example - there's Steam and
| there's everything else, but is this the case for video
| streaming? One either shells out a noticeable sum for
| Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+/HBO Max/Amazon Prime
| Video/Apple TV+/Paramount+/Peacock/... combo (with a
| number of those free on some year-long promotion), or,
| I've heard, as the those year-long trials come to end,
| fragmentation progresses, and diversity and quality of
| media on any single individual platform declines, people
| are simply starting to sail back to the high seas.
|
| Maybe if this stream dies (and companies stop blaming it
| on password sharing or whatever, but realize no one is
| paying because it's not worth it anymore) there will be
| some partnerships and larger package deals. But I'm
| skeptical, as no one had solved how to slice the pie.
| Microtransactions were proposed to solve this but any
| attempts at those had ultimately failed.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| Apple News+? I think you get access to NYT, WaPo, and a
| bunch of other paywalled stuff.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I'll check it out, thanks!
| ekianjo wrote:
| paywalls are the worst implementation possible
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Why would I want to pay for "news" when 90% of the "news" I
| would be paying for is still produced for the click
| incentivized business model?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I don't think that's the core problem. If it were, then the
| decline of news would correlate very closely to newspapers'
| fumbling of the transition to online/internet.
|
| But the decline starts much earlier in the 1980s/1990s with
| consolidation, infotainment newsfluff, disappearance of
| dailies in major cities. I can summarize in a single word,
| "Ganett".
| [deleted]
| dzonga wrote:
| I paid for the news before i.e NYT.
|
| only for them to take a political stance and discredit Bernie
| for their favorite candidate Hillary.
|
| and even, then if you pay - are you gonna log in everytime
| before you read an article.
|
| cancelling subscriptions is a pain for some of these media
| things
|
| I prefer the guardian approach - where they ask for a
| donation. then yearly I put something towards that.
|
| yeah their revenue numbers won't be strong as back then when
| people bought dead tree copies daily.
|
| but if you think of media as a sunday type issue - I mean
| most important stories would have been a sunday type issue
| anyway. then the revenue they get is comparable.
| [deleted]
| caseyross wrote:
| Isn't it more likely to be the case that no one was willing to
| pay for the investigative journalism?
|
| You see this everywhere. The clickbait is a funding source for
| the real work. Journalists almost never _want_ to push garbage
| on the public --- they 're usually forced to by management,
| either as an attempt at growth-at-all-costs or as a revenue
| source of last resort.
| gspencley wrote:
| Given they are declaring bankruptcy, there seems to be a
| signal indicating the possibility that no one was willing to
| pay for the alternative either.
| clemailacct1 wrote:
| This is so spot on of a rebuttal. Vice's shift into what
| they've become was a top-down terrible choice from what
| they used to be.
| criddell wrote:
| > Some years ago they had a large audience
|
| Were the numbers good though? Was it sustainable?
| chmod775 wrote:
| Not long ago things were looking great:
|
| > 2012 revenue of $175 million, 2014(e) revenue of $500
| million, 2016(e) revenue of $1 billion(!)
|
| > "[P]rofit margins targeted to widen to 50% of sales from
| 34% now"
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/31/.
| ..
| criddell wrote:
| I had to take a look and those estimates were wildly
| optimistic.
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/inside-vice-media-
| sh...
|
| Near the end is this:
|
| > But the underlying driver of Vice's success has always
| been the close connection between its editorial work and
| its work for brands.
|
| I'm not sure their great investigative journalism was ever
| self-sustaining.
| tyingq wrote:
| >had a large audience, me included
|
| I'm also disappointed at the drop in quality. Their reporting
| from war zones like Syria was really interesting and different.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7kJ9H
| kingsloi wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plqd8APvln0
| lrpe wrote:
| I remember how cool their stuff was ~10 years ago.
|
| Won't miss what they became.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Exactly, Hamiltons drug reports, the documentaries about
| conflicts you never heard before and the more outlandish stuff
| they reported on back then were great. I havent watched a Vice
| piece in ages, their new content became an edgier buzzfeed...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The guy (I don't remember who) who did a lot of urban
| exploring of abandoned (often eastern bloc) theme parks and
| such was amazing.
|
| They were very willing to publish people writing about all
| kinds of weird stuff (from an international perspective);
| it's a shame they couldn't translate that ethos into the
| modern internet era.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Anyone want to try to buy it with me? Might be fun.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| 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)
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Hope Joseph Cox lands somewhere even more impactful.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| 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?
| elorant wrote:
| I liked their motherboard columns. Very informative and well
| presented.
| bearmode wrote:
| They did indeed do a lot of very real journalism. Something
| most outlets just don't do anymore. It's a huge shame.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| They've had some really good content... sensationalist, maybe,
| but focusing on interesting parts of life few other
| publications would touch. For that insight I am grateful.
| ftrobro wrote:
| In January 2017 they (Motherboard) published a long and
| detailed article (translated from Das Magazin) about how
| Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data to help get Trump
| elected, somthing I thought was important for everyone to know
| about. A year later bigger media "revealed" the same
| information and it became big news around the world.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-...
| makomk wrote:
| The whoe Cambridge Analytica story was one of the major steps
| in the descent of the media into partisan ragebait, though.
| Political campaigns have long had a much more boring but
| effective way of getting the data they need to get out the
| vote which mostly boils down to asking people (and of course
| recording the results in a database). The Trump campaign
| seems to have seen the Cambridge Analytica data as a worse
| alternative to the traditional approach if the Republican
| Party didn't give access to their own, long-running voter
| database. The basis for their personality analysis was
| pseudoscience and I think it was apparently even tested and
| didn't work that well. That reporting was less about
| informing people that it was delegitimising an election
| result that many people didn't like by blaming a website that
| many journalists didn't like because it had siphoned
| advertising money away from them.
|
| For bonus partisan points, the previous Obama campaign had
| used people's Facebook interactions for voter targetting in a
| way that was ethically fishy, and this was spun as a clever
| and positive thing. Imagine if some of your friends were
| secretly siphoning off all your social media interactions
| with them into a political party algorithm that decided which
| of the people they talked to could be most effectively
| convinced to vote Obama - that's basically how their system
| worked, and it got glowing coverage after the fact in places
| like the New York Times that boasted about how effective it
| could be for commercial advertising too.
| junon wrote:
| Vice used to have a _lot_ of really great reporting. To see
| what it 's become now is saddening to me.
| usrusr wrote:
| I do. Was it all good? Certainly not. But they tried to get
| some money into actual journalism instead of just doing a
| presentation layer filled with copy paste.
|
| That's a tough problem in this day and age of reader-paid news
| simply not happening. That's not happening not only because we
| are so greedy, it's also not happening because we certainly
| don't want to get back to only reading that one paper we happen
| to be subscribers of, as it used to be before the web.
|
| We desperately need a "spotify for news", preferably with a two
| tier setup that allows a "play" of something investigative to
| have more weight than simple news agency copypasta. And
| preferably not with a central giant gatekeeper squeezing
| content suppliers as hard as possible but as a bottom-up coop,
| with reverse syndication (subscribers of A get elevated guest
| access at B and subscribers at B get guest at A) that
| redistributes a percentage of subscription revenue according to
| the spotify model (play/read counts). But as long as that
| doesn't exist, Vice was the closest thing we had to get post-
| print journalism funded.
| altacc wrote:
| Almost every closure of a real news outlet is a loss to society
| as a shrinking news market means stronger echo chambers and
| narrower reporting. Vice does some good reporting and in areas
| that others won't or only glaze over. Basically, variety &
| competition matters.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| >Almost every closure of a real news outlet is a loss to
| society
|
| (X)
|
| Only if they are good outlets. The loss of Gawkers was
| absolutely a net positive to society for example. Vice used
| to be absurdly good, mind you, but that was 10-15 years ago
| at best. There may not be that much of a loss here either,
| like Gawker.
|
| On the other hand, if stuff like AP, Reuters, or CS Monitor
| closed down, THAT would be an actual loss. Those people
| actually still do good investigative journalism now and then.
| [deleted]
| nsonha wrote:
| Twitter for one is net negative to society, at it does is
| making it extremely hard for people to actually discuss
| anything.
| skymast wrote:
| [flagged]
| unixhero wrote:
| No more Better Man episodes :(
| nubinetwork wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376
| sorokod wrote:
| Some of their reports were remarkable, for example "The Cannibal
| Warlords of Liberia" [1] - that takes courage.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo
| smcl wrote:
| Oh man this is from the _really_ early days. It 's where most
| of us learned of the bizarrely named Liberian fighter "General
| Butt Naked" for the first time.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Fascinating story, and a great retelling on the Behind the
| Bastards podcast if anyone is interested. The history of
| Liberia isn't the nicest topic, but something that doesn't
| seem widely known and maybe should be.
| user_named wrote:
| No it's not. Vice had already been around for 15 years at
| that point.
| pessimizer wrote:
| As a fashion magazine.
| vanyamarka wrote:
| There's an interesting confrontation over that piece in the NY
| Times 'Page Six' documentary, which filmed David Carr, the
| Times's then media correspondent, interviewing the Vice
| Founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo
|
| I think part of the Vice pitch was always that it was a
| disruptor of the old-fashioned media narratives, uncovering the
| stories to which boring old media was blind. I tend to agree
| with Carr's implicit critique here that we undervalue the
| journalistic, societal value of the sort of unglamorous
| coverage in which traditional media invests and at which it
| excels.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I think part of the Vice pitch was always that it was a
| disruptor of the old-fashioned media narratives, uncovering
| the stories to which boring old media was blind.
|
| That was a pitch that they stole from _Unreported World_
| [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477545/], and like the new
| Krishnan Guru-Murthy-produced version of Unreported World,
| Vice strictly stuck to areas of current US interest and
| tightly followed CIA and administration talking points.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| or, watching that lanky white boy go deep into the Amazon
| chasing a frog to get high.
| samwillis wrote:
| Other longer thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944376
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Vice's quality went down almost immediately, so there was no
| breech to fill. Certainly not a breach in independent media,
| because Vice was invested in by the same array of creeps and
| ex-generals as everyone else; they were an attempt to sell
| empire to the hipster children of rich suburbanites who moved
| to New York for graduate school.
|
| Vice started as a reasonable imitation of Journeyman Pictures
| [https://www.journeyman.tv/] that did drugs and didn't think
| women should host documentaries. Then it found a few bilingual
| fashion models to mix in with its middle-aged beardos, and sold
| itself to the borg for a billion dollars. Its secret weapon for
| profitability was a fleet of upper-middle class children who
| were supported by their parents in NY apartments, so you didn't
| have to pay them. Unfortunately, they were repulsive to
| audiences.
|
| edit: so the answer is and was Journeyman Pictures.
| sdwr wrote:
| Username what it says on the tin!
| meindnoch wrote:
| >creeps and ex-generals
|
| You mean spooks and ex-generals?
| oger wrote:
| 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...
| blastersyndrome wrote:
| [flagged]
| poppytaker wrote:
| What a weird plug for Naomi, who for the most part is
| represented by her partner Timaz. Don't forget they (Naomi and
| timaz) tried to metoo Ltt.
|
| The journalist you are referring to now works at the verge, fyi
| oger wrote:
| It's from the time when she was truly annoyed by this
| episode.
| poppytaker wrote:
| I dislike Sarah jeong but she covered it here https://twitt
| er.com/sarahjeong/status/981558161566920704?s=1...
|
| If you believe "naomi" then you have been duped by her
| American husband, timaz.
| [deleted]
| pimlottc wrote:
| That's a long read, can you provide a summary? I've never heard
| about this.
| oger wrote:
| [flagged]
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Saying "remember what they did" is content free. You
| couldve just said it.
| phreack wrote:
| Apparently, she spent some days with Vice journalists and
| showed them around for an article, believing due to some
| documents they'd sent that they would not inquire or publish
| anything about her personal relationships, and when they were
| back they started asking about some Reddit theories about her
| marriage status. She implies that kind of publicity into her
| private affairs is incredibly dangerous to her life and can't
| even specify why without exposing herself to that danger, so
| she immediately attempted to find out and stop what Vice was
| going to publish without any luck. This snowballed into a
| long online fight where major name journalists would tweet at
| her but not reply to her, making her feel desperate and
| leading to the Medium posts compiling a bit of her story
| during all this.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| [flagged]
| DamonHD wrote:
| The reason that I avoided that bunch was the very opposite of
| them being woke.
| berjin wrote:
| Whenever I think of Vice I think of this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| [dead]
| ETH_start wrote:
| 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.
| plantain wrote:
| Really sad about this. Vice went places no one else would go, and
| did deep dives on topics (drugs) conventional media wouldn't
| touch.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Makes me sad. I love their content.
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