No sooner has Pitchfork gone down the pan than another blow has been dealt to online media, with the powers-that-be pulling the plug on the Vice website and laying off hundreds of staffers.
Had this happened in the site's early days, it would hardly have been cause for lamentation. Back then, Vice was like Jackass' marginally more literate cousin, full of fratboy "humour" and motivated by a misguided belief that it was the modern standard bearer for gonzo journalism.
But there was an improbable seachange, and the site mutated into a go-to place for quality, long-form, online journalism - sometimes deadly serious, sometimes uproariously funny (Joel Golby and Oobah Butler, I'm looking at you).
In a piece for the Guardian, former Vice writer Sirin Kale pulls few punches about the toxic culture that she first walked into, and even fewer about the gross mismanagement of the "bloviating fools" in charge, culminating in this latest decision.
But she also points out that Vice became a breeding ground for young talent - and not just any old talent: "My colleagues were racially diverse, gender non-conforming, queer and from working-class and non-London backgrounds. What united them all is that they were clever, informal, funny and cunning. Vice gave a start to people who would otherwise never have got into the media. Pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV today and you will see ex-Vice staffers everywhere: they are Orwell- and Emmy-winning journalists, novelists, critics, TV personalities and hosts."
At a time when the media (like so much else) seems ever more elitist, nepotistic and closed-off, increasingly the preserve of the privileged, sites like Vice can make a genuine difference. Its demise is likely to accelerate the negative trend.
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