How VICE Lost Its Cool
12th May 2023
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. On May 1, when the New York Times reported that VICE was preparing to file for bankruptcy after culling what seemed like most of their workforce, the survivors voiced their dismay at the eulogies that followed. I get it: it’s like sitting in the living room when your parents are planning your old dog’s last day at the park. But while I’m sorry for their loss, the end of VICE is worthy of scrutiny. The publication had a wilder ride in the last two decades than any of its rivals ever will.