Vice Sets Launch of Vice Money Business and Finance Channel
Vice Media is set to debut its finance and business news and video website, Vice Money, as the youth-targeted media company parlays its brand into another vertical category.
The Vice Money channel will go live Sunday, Oct. 9, at news.vice.com/money coinciding with the premiere of the daily “Vice News Tonight” show on HBO and the Vice News site relaunch. Vice Money is part of the Vice News network.
The channel is headed by editor-in-chief Matt Phillips, most recently at Quartz where he was finance and markets editor. Prior to joining Quartz in 2012, he spent seven years as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal on the money and investing team where he his coverage included detailing the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis.
Vice Money will apply the same “youth-splaining” lens to financial and biz news and trends, a hallmark of the Vice editorial approach. Phillips said it will fill a gap to bring useful information to a younger audience, focusing on issues like the disappearance from the U.S. workforce of millions of men.
“It just seems like there’s a real chance to do something new,” Phillips said. “We’re trying to bring business news to generations of readers and viewers who are intensely interested in the role that business and finance play in the world.”
Vice Money is one of a half-dozen new channels the company is launching this year, in a bid to attract more readers — and pull in revenue from category-endemic advertisers. For the launch of Vice Money, the company has landed Geico and Ally Financial as ad sponsors.
This summer the company hired Austin Walker, former news editor at CBS Interactive’s Giant Bomb, to head its new gaming channel; other channels in store cover health, travel, LGBTQ, and sustainability. Those will join the existing owned-and-operated online channels, which include Vice News, Noisey (music), Motherboard (tech) and Munchies (food).
Phillips for now will be the primary writer for Vice Money, with plans to hire additional writers and editors. Roberto Ferdman, the economics correspondent for “Vice News Tonight” on HBO, also will contribute coverage to the channel.
Vice Money will place an emphasis on visually oriented stories, with a goal of half of the channel’s content output comprising video, Phillips said.
Topics Vice Money will cover include: affordability issues in real estate, including how first-time home buyers should approach the market; the rising cost of higher education in America and managing student debt; cities and regions attracting young people and why; and social issues including how the prison industrial complex does significant harm to the economic prospects of the formerly incarcerated.
“We’re not interested in the S&P 500 going up 4%. We’re trying to tell people things that matter to them,” Phillips said.
Original video series planned for Vice Money include: “Lunch Money,” offering opinionated takes on financial topics in the news (over lunch); “Long Story Short,” a graphics-oriented series focused on long-term shifts in the economy and why they matter today; and “How to Be a Person,” examining everyday financial issues facing young people.
Phillips, 38, is based in Vice’s Williamsburg, Brooklyn, headquarters and reports to Ryan McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Vice News. He joined the company full-time at the end of August.
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