September 19, 2019
Dear all,
Today marks an important moment in VICE’s history, as well as its future, as we enact our
‘Going Global’ plan for our Digital business. We are a 25-year-old brand, with digital roots
that reach deep in our commitment to uncover and to tell the world’s most important and
interesting stories. Through our journey, and by way of an ever-evolving digital landscape,
VICE became the voice of the global generation. But we simply cannot rest there. We are
now squarely in an era that’s increasingly isolated and polarized, where young people have
little to no trust in institutions. Yet at the same time, we find ourselves at the genesis of a
new era of hope and inclusiveness. This is a tremendous opportunity.
We are read, watched and shared around the world, daily, hundreds of millions of times; we
reach over 300 million people a month, globally! In order to realize our full potential in
creating for our vast audiences, we need to organize ourselves to reflect the borderless
mindset of our modern world. With a global mandate and a singular brand, we are breaking
down silos in our far-flung bureaus and removing isolated operational constructs. What this
means, is that our global teams will begin working together in three main buckets: content,
growth and revenue.
It’s been an exciting year for VICE Digital, as we’ve unified around a singular VICE.com
brand, with a structure that brings together our incredible coverage of everything from
technology and music to identity and environment, and lets our talented journalists work
together in ways they never have before. We’ve launched a new features desk, under the
leadership of Derek Mead and Tim Marchman, and made big hires across the newsroom
(Michelle Garcia, Harron Walker, Maxwell Strachan, Casey Johnston, among many talented
others), with over a dozen colleagues joining us in recent months. Some of the most talented
journalists in the industry, along with the most exciting emerging voices, want to work at
VICE — and we’re snapping them up. We’ll be continuing to hire across all of the content
teams on VICE Digital, with new roles to be announced soon.
On video, Cliff Gulibert is already rallying the US video team around new goals and a focus
on high-quality, serialized projects — a strategy that’s already seeing tremendous momentum
with upwards of 60 percent growth, year-over-year. But this is just one example, from one
office…imagine what our work can look like when we amplify our resources around the
world. We have already started on this journey:
Take for instance the award-winning series ‘New Neighbours,’ where we invited refugees
across Europe to guest edit our site. Or how we were in tune with Greta Thunberg early (see
our doc: ‘Make Greta Great Again’) as we saw it bubbling up and started dedicating ev