Vice Magazine was founded in 1994 Shane Smith, Gavin McInnis, and Suroosh Alvi. They decided to create a magazine while working at the Montreal Voice, a giveaway magazine focused on Haitian ethnic events in Montreal. Together, the trio decided to buy the Voice and turned it into Vice by simply cutting out the “o.” Vice Magazine was focused on culture, the arts, and unusual news topics. The magazine was issued monthly with each issue having a different theme. In 1998, a majority share of Vice was bought by Canadian software mogul Richard Szalwinski. Under Szalwinski’s direction, Vice Magazine’s headquarters was moved to New York City and a website was launched under the URL viceland.com. In this same time period, Vice launched retail stores …show more content…
This is an almost complete change from Vice in its early days when it was a magazine given away for free that was believed to have no journalistic credibility whatsoever. This change in how Vice is viewed probably comes from how news outlets as a whole have changed in the last twenty years; as more outlets move towards a focus on lifestyle journalism, Vice’s gradual movement away from it makes them seem to be reliable. This change could also be attributed to people better understanding what Vice is doing and the style of reporting that they use. An example of this would be the Vice article “Paintballing with the Hezbollah.” At first, this article may sound foolish and would appear to be a waste of time, but in actuality the reporter was able to get valuable information about a group that is usually very secretive by engaging them in a fun activity. In this case, the Vice reporter, Mitchel Prothero, was able to learn about Hezbollah’s tactics for avoiding detection while traveling along the Israel-Palestine border. Another example of their serious journalism was Vice’s documentary “The Islamic State.” In this documentary, Vice reporter Medyan Dairieh rides along with members of the Islamic State, including its Chief of Public Relations. This documentary shed light on a few things with the biggest being how completely children are inoculated into the beliefs of the Islamic State. Examples like these just go to show that Vice has become a source for real, reliable news on the internet and they will continue this trend into the world of television news with the launch of