Media owner spotlight: Vice Media’s latest generational transformation

Alex Brownsell

Vice’s chief digital officer and chief revenue officer for EMEA, Luke Barnes, explains how a “period of introspection” resulted in a fresh approach to its operations from a content standpoint, as well as in its interactions with advertisers.

Easy come, easy go – especially in the volatile world of 21st century media.

Wind the clock back to the beginning of the decade: as newspaper and magazine publishers floundered in the transition from legacy print to online and social media, commentators celebrated the ability of digitally literate rivals like Vice Media and BuzzFeed to snare millennial eyeballs. Yet those same investors now coo over the resurgence of the New York Times and The Guardian, and talk down the durability of more recent entrants to the market.

It has been an especially tough time for Vice:...

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