Youth media brand and digital content studio VICE Media has announced a major global expansion of its award-winning digital news channel, VICE News.
The expansion into seven new markets follows VICE News’ rise as the fastest-growing news channel in YouTube’s history.
Over the next six months, VICE News will launch local-language editions supported by editorial and video production newsrooms in Australia, alongside Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico.
Since launching in March 2014 across the UK and US, VICE News has been committed to uncovering the underreported stories around the world, using an immersive storytelling style and pioneering journalism techniques including live-streaming, drones and Google Glass. The channel has produced breaking and in-depth reporting on everything from the crisis in Ukraine and the front-lines in the fight against ISIS, to the current Hong Kong protests and Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
VICE News is the fastest-growing news channel in YouTube’s history to date, amassing nearly 150 million video views and over 1 million subscribers in just seven months. Additionally, its award-winning programming has been syndicated and watched across linear television by hundreds of millions of viewers.
Each of the seven new territories will offer local language editions featuring in-depth video and editorial content, including international reporting, recurring franchises, short-form and feature-length documentaries, Vine and Instagram, and live-streaming from some of the most pressing news events of our time.
To amplify VICE News’ reach and audience, YouTube will continue to serve as the flagship of VICE News’ video distribution plan. Additionally, VICE News will also continue to be deeply integrated across the Google ecosystem, including Google+, Maps, Chrome, YouTube’s Capture App, and a VICE News native Android application.
VICE News will continue to build on its success in covering the stories that often go overlooked by legacy news outlets. And though the channel won’t chase the traditional news cycle, VICE News will report from the center of the breaking stories that matter most to its audience—from civil uprisings to natural disasters—increasingly employing the latest in cutting-edge technology.
The expansion of VICE News launches off the back of the youth brand’s increased outpouring of award-winning news content through VICE.com, the VICE series on HBO, and YouTube, filling a void left by mainstream media and new aggregation websites struggling to engage youth audiences and produce high quality compelling digital programming.
