Vice’s cunning, irreverent journalism is dead – and executives with bloated pay cheques helped kill it

‘In the early days, Shane Smith ran Vice like a medieval court, distributing senior roles to people known internally as ‘Friends of Shane’, with predictable consequences.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

On Friday it was announced that the media company Vice would lay off hundreds of workers and halt publishing. It’s an ignominious end for an organisation that once promised to transform the way we consume media, and will have devastating consequences for young talent hoping to break into a shrinking industry.

I joined Vice in 2015. I was 26. I had newly quit a soul-destroying corporate job. I had no experience, no contacts and no journalism qualifications. I cold-pitched editors at Vice incessantly, and eventually one gave me a three-month paid internship. When my internship ended, my boss – a woman of luminous, shining goodness, so much so that I’d paint her into the Sistine Chapel if someone gave me a ladder and a brush – got me a job as a staff writer.