VICE Daily Content: Over 9000?
Vice Media does not publish 7,000 pieces of content a day. Not even close. (Updated Aug 28, 2016)
The Hollywood Reporter (which has done some good reporting on Vice Media in the past) recently published Shane Smith Touts Vice’s Reach With “7,000 Pieces of Content a Day” — a number so false and widely repeated I thought it deserved its own article. If you understand “7,000 pieces of content” to mean ‘unique news stories and videos’ then the number is closer to 70* — 1% of 7000.
Many numbers have been thrown around. Shane has said 7,000 previously in a Hearst Masterclass (May 2016) but he has also uttered 14,000 — twice — drunk on a podcast (Jan. 2015). Andrew Creighton, president of Vice Media, has said 6,000 on two occasions (Mar. 2015 & June 2015). Mike Germano, Chief Digital Officer of Vice and CEO/co-founder of Carrot Creative, recently said 5,000 (April 2016).
Nobody seems to have asked ‘What do you mean?’ or ‘How do you measure that?’. If I had the chance I would ask ‘Is everything above 70 — 99% of what you just said — complete BS?’
If you got a straight answer it would probably reveal that it includes employee tweets and Facebook posts. Therefore this metric, and the subsequent reprinting, is completely meaningless.
Update Aug 28 2016: Looking through old notes I found a quote of Shane Smith in a Dec. 2014 video saying “We were supposed to do 70 posts a day and now, I think, were doing something like 480 posts a day.”
Chronologically Vice went from 450 to 14,000 to 7000. Right.
Update June 5 2017: An analysis of Vice’s 58 official Twitter accounts shows 450 posts a day (including several duplicates).
For more on their mythical stats read the Vice Media Kit Analysis.
*Fact-checking method: type “the” into Google News feed with the modifier “site:vice.com” and you will get 510 articles in the last week (including omitted results).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL VOSHART works in Virtual Reality and Architecture; dabbles in Cinematography and Forensic consulting; and occasionally writes about Vice.
ABOUT NOT VICE
not vice is a critical blog about Vice Media. If you think fact-checking is important click on the heart 💚. If you don’t: go watch this video of a dog playing a banjo.
