Is VICE Black Enough? — A LinkedIn Analysis

Vice Media’s workforce appears half as diverse as the U.S. population.

Made from a selection of LinkedIn profiles of people listed as currently working for Vice Media. Freelance / contractors included.

(Update Aug 23rd 2017: Some additional information has been provide by a Vice Insider. Also, Vice has still not shared diversity numbers with ASNE.)

Unlike Vox, Buzzfeed, Mic and 734 other news organizations, Vice Media didn’t share its diversity numbers with the The American Society of News Editors. The ASNE collects and publishes diversity stats in hopes that “the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms nationwide reflect the percentage of minorities in the nation’s population by 2025”. Because Vice stonewalled them, and everyone else: I forged ahead with a preliminary LinkedIn analysis which suggests that Vice’s silence is probably more damaging than simply cooperating with simple diversity requests.

The LinkedIn analysis was a painful and awkward process (full description below) that involved using a “Pro” account, looking up (and sometimes contacting) hundreds of people on twitter and other forms of social media to determine what percent of Vice’s workforce appear / identify as Black / African American. Of the 1350 U.S. LinkedIn profiles that have Vice Media listed as their current employer: it appears that 7–8% (~70 of 900) are Black / African American.

Seven percent ‘Black / African American’ suggests that Vice U.S. is half as diverse as America’s millennial population (~14%) and low compared to the demographics of the cities in which Vice has offices. [NYC (25.5%), Washington DC (50.7%), LA (9.6%), Miami FL (19.2%)].

Diversity averages in america and J-Schools compared with Vice Media and a selection of newsrooms. (Google Sheets, notvice.com 2016)

But as much as I love pointing out what’s wrong with Vice (mainly that it’s an “advertorial network” not really a newsroom): the lack of diversity — editorial departments in particular — is systemic. The Columbia Review of Journalism said it best when it wrote about the ‘staggering job placement figures’:

“When newsrooms eliminate candidates because they didn’t volunteer on the campus newspaper, complete an unpaid internship, and come recommended by a friend — it disproportionately affects minority candidates.”

“Overall, only 49 percent of minority graduates that specialized in print or broadcasting found a full-time job, compared to 66 percent of white graduates.”

Update: A Vice Insider has alleged Vice “have suppressed initiatives to improve experience of women and [people of colour]”. Suppressing the release of diversity numbers and “firing anyone [in American offices] who is suspected in being involved with the union effort” End of Update

On a positive note, Vox Media appears to be fast tracking the ASNE’s diversity goal with a “People & Diversity Program Manager” whose job is to ‘revamp hiring practices to diversify candidate pools’. Their Jobs page has the following text below all their job descriptions:

“Vox Media is committed to building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and everyone is encouraged to apply. Vox Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, disability, national origin, protected veteran status, age, or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state, or local law.”

Obviously, I found no similar equivalent at Vice.

I will update this page if anything changes.

Methodology / Accuracy

A perfectly diverse workforce, as seen in a ten-results-a-page LinkedIn search, should reveal one or two Black / African American people (More precisely: 57% White, 20% Hispanic, 14% Black / African American, 6% Asian, 1% AI / NH, 2% Mixed) — clearly this is not what I saw.

As inaccurate as my results may be, they are almost certainly in Vice’s favor. I used numbers based on all workforce occupations (accounting, advertising, HR etc. were included) where minority employment is more likely to be equal to whites. Additionally, while trying to gauge ethnicity, I classified anyone that appeared ethnically vague as Black which probably included several Hispanic and mixed-race persons (Trevor Noah’s dreams come true). For this reason (and doing this is a little crazy-making) I didn’t bother deriving a minority number.

For LinkedIn profiles without an image I found one on either their personal website, Twitter profile or social media account. Occasioanlly I checked the surname demographics to see if I was on a wild goose-chase. If a name was simply too common and no image could be found I did not include it in the total sum. This missing image search was the most time consuming aspect but important because I had a hypothesis that persons of colour might avoid putting an image to avoid racial profiling.

Another concern was that perhaps people of colour are less likely to use LinkedIn. A 2014 LinkedIn blog stated their male-female ratio was on target to become 50/50. In 2016 Pew Research showed a gap between male and female users and higher usages among people from wealthier families. Pew’s social media diversity numbers from 2013, 2014 and 2015 had small sample sizes (~1,500) and showed an inconsistent trend. Given the conflicting information I simply assumed equal use of LinkedIn across all demographics.

Any measure of completeness is difficult since Vice tends to inflate all their numbers including employee numbers. I have no way of knowing what percentage of the workforce I have looked through.

A quick LinkedIn check of Mic.com employees resulted in 16 people who were visibly Black / African American of the ~170 profiles that had images. Roughly, one in ten compared to their self-reported 6.5%. A similar search of Vox.com revealed 31 profiles who were visibly Black / African American of the ~450 profiles with images — lower than would be expected from their self-reported numbers).

Duly Noted

1. This search began as a fact finding mission to a tip that Vice used to have a person of colour hiring issue. Specifically, that minorities were more likely to be on contract and unlikely to be hired full-time unless it was in accounting. It seems to be less of an issue now. (Update:
2. I could only find 12 Black / African american profiles working for Vice Canada and only one was listed as a full-time reporter. The LinkedIn search yielded a sample size too small to draw inferences — only 263 results.
3. One freelancer had positive things to say about Vice. That Vice gave them their first break. They wished to remain anonymous.
4. There are some incredibly vague responses about diversity at Vice in this 2 y/o Buzzfeed article.
5. Gavin McInnes, former co-founder of Vice (gone since 2008), is a gleeful agitator of ‘knee-jerk liberals’ and widely considered to be racist but… with statements like ‘Black guys with green eyes get laid too much — I don’t like them because of that’ it might just be a sustained, postmodern act to get media attention. However, I lean towards the first interpretation.
6. Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of Vice is Pakistani-Canadian and I’ve only heard nice things about him.
7. If you work for a competing media organization and want to steal all of Vice’s diverse employees you can find that list here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DANIEL VOSHART is ~1/8th aboriginal [~Métis]. He works in VR and maintains an adversarial blog about Vice Media.

ABOUT NOT VICE

not vice is a critical blog about Vice Media. If you like what you’re reading: use Medium’s 👏🏼 👏🏽 👏🏾 👏🏿 feature to increase visibility.