Global alternative culture magazine publisher and media company Vice this week announced a major expansion of its news operation online with a focus on video.
Vice News editor-in-chief Jason Mojica told The New York Observer: “We’re basically going to play to our strengths, which has been that longer-form documentary video.
“We’re going to be increasing the volume of that significantly.”
The Vicenews.com website will publish 50 news posts everyday, combining long form text, photographs, videos and livestreaming. The site is expected to go live this week.
It will also include news coverage from the 35 nations where Vice offices are located, such as the UK, Brazil, Russia, Spain, Mexico and China.
Vice's audience is larger outside of the United States – especially in Western Europe, Brazil, China and Mexico than it is inside the US – according to Vice chief executive Shane Smith.
He is currently banned from entering North Korea after publishing two critical documentaries on about the country's government regime.
He told The Guardian: "I think we learned in the cold war that the ‘commies-eat-babies’, fucking, ‘we're not gonna talk to them’ propaganda rhetoric bullshit and ‘we're just gonna point fucking tonnes of fucking missiles’ – it doesn't fucking work. Dialogue always works. That's what news is. And we're going to show you what's going on.”
Smith also told The Guardian that big media companies look at Vice and “they're like, 'fuck – we don't have any of this shit, and you guys are the whole next level. We'll just fucking buy you'. And we keep saying ‘no, no, no’”.
He added: “I think I'll probably do this, because I'm weird, until we really are sort of the next MTV or CNN."
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