The financially stretched company, which won a Pulitzer prize for international reporting in 2021 and was once a bona fide force in UK political coverage, has just a $75m market valuation after an ill-received flotation two years ago.ĭavid Cameron, the then UK prime minister, takes part in a BuzzFeed News and Facebook Live EU referendum debate in 2016. The news, which came after the company failed to convince as many as five potential suitors that it was worth being bought for $1.5bn, followed BuzzFeed shutting down what remained of its once high-flying news department last month and making 180 staff redundant. On Friday, it emerged that Vice Media is nearing a deal to be bought out of bankruptcy by senior lenders in a process that would wipe out existing shareholders including Murdoch’s son, James. “That attracted eye-watering investments and valuations: for maybe five years there was a real moment in the sun, but the ascent proved to be like Icarus and now everyone is burnt.”Įarlier this week it was reported that Vice, which was valued at as much as $5.7bn in 2017 having rejected a potentially $3bn-plus deal with Disney two years earlier, was close to filing for bankruptcy.
“Vice and BuzzFeed really had that secret sauce for a while, where the intersection of media platform, technology and content engaged with young people,” says one former Vice staffer.
#Icarus brewing cracked
They were just two of the “old media” titans scrambling to buy into a generation of new players who appeared to have cracked the code for attracting the youth audiences abandoning traditional outlets in their droves. Global success.- Rupert Murdoch October 13, 2012Ī year later, Disney had a secret $650m offer to buy fellow digital high-flyer BuzzFeed spurned, despite its then president reportedly getting on his knees to beg the founder, Jonah Peretti, to take the money.
Who's heard of VICE media? Wild, interesting effort to interest millenials who don't read or watch established media.
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