Vice Media bills itself as the “hipster bible” of sorts, and has earned a reputation as a plucky upstart delivering edgy content to anti-establishment youths. It is rapidly transforming itself into a vast corporate media empire, recently partnering with Disney (its largest outside investor) to launch its own television channel.
One might assume that Vice’s counter-culture vibe and anti-establishment worldview would preclude it from treating its large network of freelance contributors like total garbage. But that’s exactly what they do, according to a new report in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Yardena Schwartz writes that Vice appears to be in “a league of its own” when it comes to antagonizing the freelance journalists who contribute a significant share of its edgy content. Schwartz interviewed more than two-dozen freelancers who have done work for Vice, nearly all of which shared negative stories about callous exchanges, agreements being rescinded, and payments being made late or not at all.
Even the (three) freelancers she found that positive things to say about working for Vice complained about how little they were paid and how long it took to receive the money.
Schwartz spoke to two veteran journalists in France who were contacted by Vice for help on a documentary about Islamic extremism. When either inquired about the rate they would be paid, they were repeatedly ignored. Both described their experience working for Vice as the worst in their careers as freelance journalists.
Schwartz found freelancers all over the world with similar experiences, and recounted her own disappointing interaction with company while working as a journalist in Israel in 2015. The Vice editor who commissioned a story from her “disappeared” and wouldn’t return calls until, five days later, this person decided that the story was no longer relevant and offered to pay 15 percent of the previously agreed-upon rate.
Award-winning journalist Susana Ferreiera told Schwartz, “I’ve heard again and again (even from former employees) that this is a fairly standard Vice approach.” Ferreiera once helped a Vice team working on documentary in Haiti, but was met with silence when she inquired about the pay rate.
Former Vice staffers concurred about this being the “standard Vice approach.” One said that Vice “runs on the notion that the people inside of it are the ‘coolest’ and most important people on the planet, so the very idea of feeling guilty about neglecting to pay an outsider like this would be preposterous to them.” Another former staffer conceded there was “a problem with the culture of the place.”
Vice has done cool things like going to North Korea and hanging out with tinpot dictator Kim Jong-un, who recently executed one of his education ministers because he thought his “posture” during a recent meeting was “disrespectful.”
Vice Media CEO Shane Smith, a Canadian, is very rich. He recently bought a second house in Los Angeles for $3.8 million — just one mile down the road from the $23 million mansion he bought in 2015.
Vice CEO Shane Smith just bought a second Los Angeles home for $3.8 million https://t.co/XCRoQK2J91 #Property pic.twitter.com/itVJJUxQ2q
— HomesGoFast.com (@homesgofast) July 16, 2016
Last year, Smith celebrated after a meeting with Disney executives by dropping $300,000 on dinner at a steakhouse in Las Vegas. That’s pretty edgy.
Smith hasn’t always been so cool. New York Times media columnist David Carr smacked him down fairly epically in this video from 2011.
By the way, Shane Smith kind of looks like a business casual version of celebrity chef Guy Fieri.
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