[NYPOST] The ax is swinging at Vice Media.The Brooklyn-based gonzo news outfit said it will slash 10 percent of its workforce, or about 250 jobs ‐ the latest in a wave of layoffs that have hit a new generation of media companies including BuzzFeed and HuffPost.
The fresh carnage at Vice was announced Friday by Chief Executive Nancy Dubuc, a former A+E chief who was brought in last March amid reports of a frat-house culture at the company under its co-founder and larger-than-life ex-CEO Shane Smith.
Smith ‐ under pressure last spring over a slew of complaints about sexual misconduct at the millennial news outlet ‐ relinquished the reins so that Dubuc could come in and clean up Vice’s culture and lavish spending in order to bring it to profitability.
All Vice departments are expected to have layoffs, as the company eyes redundancies overseas and focuses on growth businesses, including producing commercial spots on TV and the web for corporate clients.
"Having finalized the 2019 budget, our focus shifts to executing our goals and hitting our marks," Dubuc wrote in a memo sent to staff on Friday morning. "We will make Vice the best manifestation of itself and cement its place long into the future."
Vice will no longer divvy up its business country by country, instead organizing it according to larger regions and business lines.
The bloodbath isn’t surprising. Under Smith, Vice had expanded internationally at a fast clip with offices in far-flung destinations like Serbia, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Mexico, Romania and the UK.
At one time, Vice had been seen as the hottest media company in the US with a $5.7 billion valuation. But in 2017, Vice missed its revenue target of $805 million by more than $100 million and the company is still not profitable. Dubuc said last fall that she expects Vice to be profitable "within the fiscal year" thanks to her cost-cutting efforts.
Changes at Vice come amid a reckoning at online media publishers that in recent years have been pumped with billions of venture capital and traditional media dollars.
This week, BuzzFeed laid off 15 percent of its staff, or around 250 jobs. Separately, Verizon slashed 800 jobs at its media unit that owns AOL, Yahoo and HuffPost.