Full story below, but the PressGazette email newsletter sums up well what is happening to the hot news websites of 10 years ago that are now all going under:
Dominic Ponsford, Feb 23, 2024
“I can recall asking a room full of bright university students where they got their news from ten years ago and many said websites like Vice, The Guardian and Buzzfeed News.
“When I repeated the same exercise a few months ago almost none mentioned any particular website brand. Instead they said: Twitter, Tiktok, Snapchat and Youtube.
“Therein lies the problem for Vice News, the media brand that was valued at nearly $6bn in 2017, filed for bankruptcy in May last year and yesterday announced the closure of its website publishing operation with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
“The young style-conscious readers Vice targets are nearly as likely to buy a newspaper as they are to type a particular newsbrand’s URL into their web browser (or download its app). Research from the Reuters Institute shows that 18 to 24-year-olds are just as interested in news as older folks, but they tend to access it via social media.
“So Vice closing its news website is not that surprising (or even the end of the road for the brand).
“It has nearly nine million followers on Youtube, nearly eight million subscribers on Snapchat, 1.5 million followers on Tiktok, three million followers on Instagram and 4.4 million followers on Facebook.
“These platforms need users to come back day after day and news is a great way of ensuring that happens. So Vice will live on.
“But today is a sad one for independent journalism on the open web which is being squeezed out of existence by a few dominant US tech platforms.”
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