Vice Media Expands Global News Footprint With Vice World News, Coverage Of Social Justice Issues, Unveils Series At NewFronts

Jill Goldsmith
·6 min read

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Vice Media Group Wednesday set the premiere for Vice TV’s Disruptors (working title), a new series with sports journalists Jemele Hill and Cari Champion, announced a major global news expansion and an investigative series with iHeart Media.

The group is also launching ‘The 8:46 Project,’ a company-wide commitment to expand coverage and reporting on systemic racism across all of VICE’s brands including: Vice News, Vice Digital, Noisey, Munchies and Vice TV.

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Continuing to retool is large news operation, Vice is launching Vice World News, the Nancy Dubuq-led company said at its virtual NewFront presentation. It plans to create hundreds of hours of international television and digital and audio news programming, scaling operations well beyond its existing footprint.

The announcement came after the company made a series of senior promotions in news with Subrata De becoming EVP and Global Head of Programming and Development for Vice News. She was previously Senior Executive Producer, Long Form. De will work alongside Susie Banikarim, EVP and Global Head of Newsgathering,

Vice World News journalists reporting from EMEA, APAC, Latin America and North America will provide global coverage across the organization’s core beats including extremism, climate, drugs, privacy, politics, and inequality. The expansion includes television and digital content with the first offerings from Vice World News now available on Vice.com’s English-language sites. More products will launch over the coming year. TV programming currently in production to be released in the U.S. and internationally includes deep dives into border regions, video games and fanaticism, and a series called The Source that goes behind major stories.

The expanded news venture marks another step for the division that a year ago ended a seven-year run with HBO for Vice News Tonight and shifted leadership as Jesse Angelo replaced Josh Tyrangiel. Vice inked a deal with Showtime to air the series and has also pacted with Hulu for a separate show, Vice Investigates.

Under Dubuq, Vice has also been streamlining its operations and gone through several waves of layoffs, the latest being 155 staffers in May.

Vice and iHeart Media are launching Vice News Reports, a new weekly investigative series covering critical news subjects from around the world, co-produced by iHeartRadio and Vice News.

With Disruptors Vice said it hopes to build on the success of this season’s Dark Side Of The Ring, the highest rated show in the network’s history, and a spring slate of new series including: Shelter in Place with Shane Smith, A Seat at the Table with Anand Giridharadas and No Mercy, No Malice with Professor Scott Galloway.

The weekly show with Hill and Champion, who are veteran journalists, former colleagues, and close riends, unpacks the biggest topics and headlines of the week in an unfiltered conversation with commentary from expert guests.

Champion spent nearly a decade at ESPN, where she served as a SportsCenter anchor, co-host of SportsNation, host of ESPN2’s First Take and her own weekly podcast Be Honest with Cari Champion. Currently, she is a field reporter on Season 2 of NBC’s reality competition series, The Titan Games, created and presented by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Emmy award winning journalist Hill is the co-founder of Lodge Freeway Media, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and host of the weekly Spotify Original podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered. Previously, over the course of a dozen years at ESPN, Hill served as chief correspondent and senior columnist for The Undefeated, co-anchor of the network’s flagship six o’clock SportsCenter, SC6 with Michael & Jemele and the popular podcast and weekday TV show His & Hers. Prior to joining ESPN.com as a national columnist, she was the only African-American female sports columnist in the country while at the Orlando Sentinel.

Vice also introduced a new program called the 2030 Project, a paid, 12-month collaboration with a group of young people, from diverse backgrounds and experiences invited into the organization to look 10 years into the future and envision what life might be like for their own generation come 2030. The group of 12 will collaborate with researchers, developers and creators to produce content across VICE’s TV, digital and editorial platforms

Vice World News series:

BORDER TO BORDER

Are we heading for a borderless future or tied inescapably to the divisions of the past? Borders are flashpoints for the forces reshaping our world. In “Border to Border,” VICE News correspondent David Noriega embeds in borderlands across the world, delivering an immersive, first hand look at life on the edges from both sides of the line.

RESET

Video games are not niche; they are the biggest media industry in the world. While we’ve all seen games like Goldeneye and World of Warcraft glue eyeballs to screens in the millions, the untold origin stories behind these games are just as compelling as the games themselves. In “Reset,” VICE News correspondent Dexter Thomas explores the games that created the global phenomenon, from Super Mario Brothers to Fortnite.

FANATICS

Fandom is the new religion. As traditional institutions and belief systems lose power, new cults of personality are born every day. In “Fanatics,” VICE News correspondent Alice Hines delves into the unorthodox lives and complex motivations of people who devote themselves so deeply in a space between interest and obsession, they change irrevocably. Each episode is a window into a set of intimate experiences: at turns surreal, tragic, confounding, and profound.

THE SOURCE

Whether it’s the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, mass migration, or an emerging conflict, “The Source” will peel back the layers of the world’s biggest stories to uncover where the story began. Reporters from around the world will bring the audience along to dissect one compelling news story, told in an hour-long documentary. From an investigation into the coronavirus conspiracy theories, to a blow-by-blow account of President Trump’s photo op at St. John’s Church, “The Source” will show you what is really happening behind the headlines.

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