The media group is the latest to shed jobs amid declining revenues in the digital era.
Vice Media, which has hailed millennials and Gen Z, has announced it will stop publishing new content on its flagship website and lay off several hundred employees in the latest blow to the struggling media industry.
Weiss filed for bankruptcy in May before being sold to New York-based Fortress Investment Group for $350 million.
Cost-cutting measures, including several rounds of job cuts and the cancellation of its popular Vice News Tonight program, have failed to change its fortunes, reflecting the broader struggles of news stations in the digital age.
Vice will stop publishing content on Vice.com and partner with other media companies, Vice Media Group CEO Bruce Dixon said in a memo widely shared online.
“With this strategic shift, we need to realign our resources and streamline our overall operations at Vice,” Dixon said in his note, adding that the company “will transition to a studio model.
“Unfortunately, we will be reducing our workforce, eliminating several hundred positions,” Dixon said.
More details on the cuts are expected to be announced next week.
In January, the youth-focused brand announced that its music website Pitchfork Media would be rolling over GQ magazine — erasing another staple of 2000s alternative culture.
Vice's downfall comes as traditional and digital media struggle to find a coherent business model, with hundreds of jobs shed by the industry in the past year alone.
Vice's rivals BuzzFeed News and Jezebel both closed last year, while Vox Media and publishing juggernaut Condé Nast cut jobs.
The bleeding continued into 2024, with digital news startup The Messenger shuttered and layoffs announced at TechCrunch, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Newsroom employment in the United States fell by more than a quarter between 2008 and 2021, according to the Pew Research Center, as print ad revenue dried up as the shift to digital content dried up.
Founded in 1994 as the Voice of Montreal, before changing its name when it later moved to New York, Vice has grown from a print magazine into a broad multimedia company offering original digital and video content and several offshoot channels.
At the height of its success in 2017, the media group was worth $5.7bn.
