Information group Vice Media, bankrupt since May, will lay off dozens more employees, a union announced, and feminist website Jezebel will close, according to its management, a new example of the difficulties of young media outlets in the United States.
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According to an employee familiar with the company’s decisions and the Vice Union, which denounced a management stance on X (formerly Twitter), Vice Media, whose headquarters are in Brooklyn, the fashionable New York borough, will Separate by several dozen people “only adds insult to injury.”
According to the specialized online newspaper Deadline, Vice’s two directors, Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala, announced this to employees on Thursday.
According to the union, “many people lost their jobs today” and the announcement was made during a “meeting” that was actually “streamed live via video, with no opportunity to ask questions.”
According to the employee interviewed by AFP, who wished to remain anonymous, between 50 and 100 departures are planned.
“The managers hardly noticed the massive layoffs,” criticized the union, and in fact there was no communication from management.”
Vice Media announced in June that it had been acquired by creditors for $350 million a month after filing for bankruptcy, a move that should allow the company to continue operating.
But according to an employee and Deadline, the Vice reports that had been running on Showtime TV channels for years have been canceled, as has the flagship show “Vice News Tonight,” which led to 100 layoffs in the spring.
Vice Media was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017.
At the time, the group represented a new generation of online media with original reporting and an approach that experts believed would revolutionize the industry.
But most sites have never made the profits investors expected in a difficult advertising market.
The first American feminist information site, Jezebel, announced the “cessation of operations” and the “departure of 23 members of the editorial board” in a memorandum consulted by AFP.
Citing “economic headwinds,” G/O Media Group CEO Jim Spanfeller complained that the network’s model and customers were not “aligned with Jezebel’s.”
Launched in 2007, Jezebel gained legitimacy thanks to thoughtful and well-written articles about women’s rights and conditions.
In April, BuzzFeed also closed its BuzzFeed News website with 180 layoffs.