The precursor to
Vice magazine was founded in October 1994 in
Montreal under the name
Voice (later
Voice of Montreal), by Interimages Communications. It was a spin-off of the English-language portion of
Images magazine, a multicultural publication founded in the early 1990s by
Dominique Ollivier with Alix Laurent, under the name
Voice of Montreal. Issue no. 1 lists Laurent and Ollivier as publishers, with
Suroosh Y. Alvi as editor and
Gavin McInnes as assistant editor, with
Shane Smith joining the magazine's staff later. The magazine was established under a job creation program of the Quebec government to allow social welfare recipients to gain work experience. It focused on Montreal's alternative cultural scene, including music, art, trends and drug culture, to compete with the already established
Montreal Mirror. During the 1990s, Montreal's
Plateau Mont-Royal/
Mile-End neighbourhood was home to a burgeoning subculture with the advent of collectives such as
Godspeed You! Black Emperor,
Dummies Theatre,
Bran Van 3000 and later
Arcade Fire. Alvi, McInnes and Smith bought out the publisher and changed the magazine's name to
Vice in 1996.
Richard Szalwinski, a Canadian software millionaire, acquired the magazine and relocated the operation to New York City in 1999. Following the relocation, the magazine quickly developed a reputation for provocative and
politically incorrect content. Under Szalwinski's ownership, a few retail stores were opened in New York City and customers could purchase fashion items that were advertised in the magazine. However, due to the end of the
dot-com bubble, the three founders eventually regained ownership of the
Vice brand, followed by closure of the stores. By the end of 2007, 13 foreign editions of
Vice magazine were published, the Vice independent record label was functional, and the online video channel VBS.com had 184,000 unique viewers from the U.S. during the month of August. The media company was still based in New York City, but the magazine began featuring articles on topics that were considered more serious, such as armed conflict in Iraq, than previous content. Alvi explained to
The New York Times in November 2007: "The world is much bigger than the Lower East Side and the East Village." At the commencement of 2012, an article in
Forbes magazine referred to the Vice company as "Vice Media", but the precise time when this title development occurred is not public knowledge.
Vice acquired the fashion magazine
i-D in December 2012 and, by February 2013,
Vice produced 24 global editions of the magazine, with a global circulation of 1,147,000 (100,000 in the UK). By this stage, Alex Miller had replaced Capper as the editor-in-chief of the UK edition. Furthermore,
Vice consisted of 800 worldwide employees, including 100 in London, and around 3,500 freelancers also produced content for the company. In 2018, the magazine switched to a quarterly publication schedule, though issues still generally explored a single theme. The publication was put on hiatus in 2019. In 2023,
Vice filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company's lenders—
Fortress Investment Group,
Soros Fund Management and
Monroe Capital—agreed to purchase the company for $225 million. In February 2024,
The New York Times highlighted that "over the past half-decade,
Vice has had near annual layoffs and mounting losses, and has filed for bankruptcy, making it the poster child for the battered digital-media industry" and that while "some observers hoped its new owners [...] would reinvest" in the company, Fortress Investment Group had instead "decided to make sweeping cuts". In September 2024, Vice Media relaunched its print magazine and would publish issues quarterly. The company has a goal of reaching 20,000 subscribers within a year. ==Staff==