Vice Media sets recruitment freeze and seeks to downsize by 15% – Variety

Vice Media, headed by Nancy Dubuc, recently headed by the CEO, is about to tighten his belt.

The company, which is seeking to reduce costs in a context of slowing revenues, has implemented a recruitment freeze and wants to reduce the size of its workforce over the next year, confirmed sources. Vice hopes to avoid redundancies as such, aiming at achieving the downsizing objectives, ie by not hiring replacements for departing employees.

Vice's downsizing plans have been described for the first time by the Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, the company plans to reduce its workforce from 10% to 15%. A source close to the company said there was no real percentage that Vice aimed to reduce its workforce.

At the New York Times DealBook conference, Dubuc said that Vice would become profitable again in the next fiscal year. The CEO noted that Vice was profitable a few years ago, before investing heavily in launching the Viceland cable channel and expanding internationally.

In addition to hiring freezes, Dubuc plans to consolidate about a dozen Vice vertical sites (called "channels"), which include Motherboard, Broadly, Noisey, Vice Sports and Waypoint. The number of sites dedicated to different topics that can naturally be combined is not entirely clear. Therefore, Vice may end up closing some of them or integrating them into its larger channel, Vice News. Two years ago, Shane Smith, vice president and co-founder, touted the launch of new channels as a great growth initiative.

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The Brooklyn-based youth-focused media company has already experienced staff cuts. In July 2017, Vice eliminated approximately 2% of its 3,000 employees in several departments, while expanding its business internationally and boosting video production.

The latest cost-cutting measure comes as Vice's earnings have stagnated. In 2018, the company internally expects a turnover of between $ 600 and $ 650 million, stable compared to 2017, reported the Journal. Vice expects to lose more than $ 50 million this year, although this is an improvement over its loss of more than $ 100 million last year, according to the WSJ.

If Vice has not yet made any layoffs, the lack of growth in the company and the new cost cutting measures certainly can not hurt his morale. Vice had recently had 220 vacancies she was looking for, before the hiring freeze, the Journal reported.

Dubuc, former CEO of A + E Networks, has been named CEO of Vice following a scandal of sexual harassment in the company that resulted in the departure or dismissal of several executives. Co-founder Shane Smith took on a new role as Executive Chairman.

Under Dubuc's Vice Vice plan, President Andrew Creighton left the company following the New York Times report that he allegedly paid a former Vice employee to settle a harassment complaint. Previously, Vice had stated that an independent review had concluded that the harassment complaint "lacked merit", but was suspending it while his job was under investigation.