This amazes me: what makes them think that they aren't a trusted source of news for their audience?
> With expansion comes a sense of responsibility,” he told me recently in one of Vice’s glass-walled conference rooms. “As time goes on I don’t think that being silly, being stupid, is cool anymore. When you look at the planet, at the state that it’s in, it demands attention. It demands scrutiny. And it demands a certain level of seriousness.”
Could it be that it's exactly the lack of seriousness of Vice's reporting up to this point that has made people trust them? Reality isn't always serious, and when it is, sometimes the only way to deal with it is to laugh at it, or to admit that it's strange.
In short, this looks like yet another company getting big and then changing everything that made them successful. It's not necessarily going to hurt their bottom line, but it's an example of why companies getting big is bad for consumers.