Transparent Vice

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Shane Smith built Vice into a cultural behemoth by bluffing his way into round after round of funding — until he reached a dizzying $5.7 billion valuation from which only a precipitous fall was possible.

That fall has been happening in slow motion for years, but things finally crashed to the ground in February of this year, when Vice announced it would shutter its award-winning news division, lay off hundreds, and stop publishing to its website entirely. For some insiders at the company, this outcome felt inevitable. The only question was how long Smith could keep making deals to keep disaster at bay.

Vice employed a lot of talented people at its lower levels. But any attempt to look at the company’s finances suggests a long history of issues at the very top. Vice Media’s overall business had been rickety for years before it filed for bankruptcy in May 2023 and sold itself to Fortress, an investment management firm.

According to sources, while Vice execs were spending opul …

Read the full story at The Verge.