January 2009 'The Universal Sadness Issue' |
|
| Editor | Rocco Castoro (Editor-in-Chief) Andy Capper (Global Editor) |
|---|---|
| Categories | Lifestyle |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Total circulation |
900,000 (worldwide) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | http://www.vice.com |
VICE is a free magazine and media conglomerate founded in Montreal, Quebec and currently based in New York City.
Vice is available in 27 countries. Editions are published in Canada, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States. It is free and supports itself primarily through advertising. Jesse Pearson was Vice's editor-in-chief for eight years until resigning in December, 2010. The current editor-in-chief is Rocco Castoro, and the global editor is Andy Capper.
Contents |
Founded by Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith, and Gavin McInnes, it was launched as the Voice of Montreal in 1994 with government funding to provide work and a community service.[2] When the editors wanted to break free of their commitments with the original publisher, Alix Laurent, they bought him out and changed the name to Vice in 1996. In search of more streetwear advertising income, they moved to New York City in 1999. Today, the magazine has over 900,000 readers across 22 different countries.[3]
Vice's content has shifted from dealing mostly with independent arts and pop cultural matters to covering more serious news topics, although both are often treated with the same spirit of blithe and caustic irreverence. Vice has championed the "Immersionist" school of journalism, which it regards as something of a DIY antithesis to the big-office methods practiced by traditional news outlets, and has published an entire issue composed of articles written in this manner. There have also been issues of the magazine wholly dedicated to concerns facing Iraqi people,[4] Native Americans,[5] Russian people,[6] people with mental disorders,[7] and people with mental disabilities.[8] Vice also publishes an annual guide for students in the UK.[9]
In 2007, Vice announced: "After umpteen years of putting out what amounted to a reference book every month, we started to get bored with it. Besides, too many other magazines have ripped it and started doing their own lame take on themes. So we're going to do some issues, starting now, that have whatever we feel like putting in them."[10]
The magazine's "DOs and DON'Ts" feature displays candid photographs of strangers in public places accompanied by commentary either ridiculing or praising the fashion and perceived sensibility of the people in the photos. Some DOs and DON'Ts do not seriously address fashion, but merely couple the photos with humorous commentary. The idea has also been spun off into a book, and has been imitated by other publications. In February 2009, prompted by a single similar column in Glamour called "Dudes and Don'ts", a Vice blog entry announced the imminent end of the feature.[11] However, it has so far continued.
Articles such as The Vice Guide to Shagging Muslims and Bukkake On My Face: Welcome to the Ancient Tradition of the Japanese Facial have precipitated the magazine being banned from a number of university campuses. The VICE Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll was banned from some bookstores in 2003.[12]
Vice has also been accused of using irony to conceal reactionary politics and to promote conservative, racist, and sexist attitudes.[13][14][15][16] In August 2003, Vice cofounder Gavin McInnes wrote a piece in The American Conservative entitled "Hip to Be Square: It’s getting cooler to be conservative".
McInnes' views on immigration have generated controversy. In a September 2003 interview with The New York Times, McInnes stated, "I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of." He also remarked, "I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life." McInnes has since said that the interview was a prank on the young fashion journalist who wrote the piece.[17]
Later, responding to the controversy, McInnes stated that "baby boomer media like The New York Times is a laughing stock, and we should do whatever we can to ridicule it".[17]
Another controversial article is First Amendment Fashion Statements Offensive T-shirts Are The American Way, which satirizes and deconstructs the notion of freedom of speech in the first amendment. It basically exposes the flaws and duality of what is socially not considered fair-game of ridicule and what is protected by freedom of speech. The sarcastic t-shirts read the phrases such as, "September 11, 2001 was a blast", or featured pictures such as Mother Teresa in sexual intercourse.[18]
In a March 2008 interview with The Guardian, Shane Smith (co-founder) was questioned about the magazine's political allegiances: "We're not trying to say anything politically in a paradigmatic left/right way...We don't do that because we don't believe in either side. Are my politics Democrat or Republican? I think both are horrific. And it doesn't matter anyway. Money runs America; money runs everywhere."[2]
Vice is well known for publishing and using some of the best young and up and coming photographers, and big names across the States and Europe, starting the career for many. These have included Terry Richardson, Richard Kern, Jaimie Warren, Jerry Hsu, Ryan McGinley, Craig Cowling and Patrick O’Dell.
Vice is characterised by an irreverent style of photography. Examples of subjects have been ex-convicts showing how to make a shiv-proof vest out of magazines or malnourished Bangladeshi children posing for a fashion shoot.
Vice has published three fiction issues. Notable inclusions include interviews with Dennis Cooper and Harold Bloom and stories by Ann Beattie, Stephen Dixon, Tao Lin, and Carlton Mellick III.
In 2006[19] Vice published a special comics issue guest-edited by Johnny Ryan. True to the underground spirit of both the magazine and Ryan, the collection of one-page comics were mostly crude, scatological, sexually perverse, and/or violent in nature. The more than thirty contributors included cover illustrator Al Jaffee, Ryan, Peter Bagge, Steven Weissman, Gary Panter, Jordan Crane, Robert Crumb, Dave Cooper, Tony Millionaire, Mary Fleener, Martin Kellerman, Sam Henderson, Rick Altergott, Sophie Crumb, and Sammy Harkham.
Vice's "Viceland Today" features more than a dozen weekly columns online including "Friday Tyrant" by New York Tyrant editor Giancarlo DiTrapano and Jamie Taete's Internet Roundup. In May 2011 a new column by Tao Lin called "Drug-Related Photoshop Art" was announced.
The magazine has published the collections The DOs and DON'Ts Book and The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. In 2008, The Vice Photo Book was released, a collection of the most powerful photography published in previous editions of Vice.[20]
Vice has created a retail clothing chain, Vice Retail. Vice also has strong ties with clothing line American Apparel, a frequent advertiser in Vice Magazine.
Vice Recordings has released albums and singles, mainly in the U.S. market, by
VBS.tv is available for viewing on the internet, with the intention of circumventing network intervention over content issues and allowing for a global, free-of-charge distribution plan akin to that of the magazine.[21] Vice Films released a feature length documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, in 2008 as well its first theatrical release entitled White Lightnin' in 2009 and a documentary on professional bull riders entitled The Ride due out in 2010.[22] It contributes some of its films, as well as new material, to MTV in a series called The Vice Guide to Everything, which premiered December 2010.
Vice has a documentary film series called the Vice Guide to Travel, available for streaming on VBS.tv.
Vice also runs a pub and music venue in Shoreditch, east London, The Old Blue Last.[23]