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Vice Media's Fall: Shane Smith and How the Company Burned

hollywoodreporter.com · 1,570 words · saved by 1 readers

How did a Brooklyn media giant valued at $5.7 billion just a few years ago wind up going bankrupt and folding its newsroom? Look no further than its brash (and still highly paid) founder. BY LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT Just weeks after the company he founded entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy last May, Shane Smith jetted to the French Riviera. But this wasn’t a vacation for the 54-year-old flamboyant former Vice CEO to drown his sorrows. Smith landed in Cannes on a mission to save the media company that he had started as a scrappy punk music magazine in Montreal three decades ago from the financial scrap heap. Smith, the brash face of Vice, had been quietly operating behind the scenes since stepping aside as CEO in 2018. In his new capacity as executive chairman, he worked the phones and hustled for deals as only he knew how. Now, accompanied by his chief of staff, Alon Soran, he was at Cannes Lions, the annual advertising confab that attracts the monied set looking to do business, desperate to ensu

Illustration by Zohar Lazar Just weeks after the company he founded entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy last May, Shane Smith jetted to the French Riviera. But this wasn't a vacation for the 54-year-old flamboyant former Vice CEO to drown his sorrows. Smith landed in Cannes on a mission to save the media company that he had started as a scrappy punk music magazine in Montreal three decades ago from the financial scrap heap. Smith, the brash face of Vice, had been quietly operating behind the scenes since stepping aside as CEO in 2018. In his new capacity as executive chairman, he worked the phones a

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