How VICE could create crap and still be important and worth $1 billion

Media companies around the world are running the numbers. What is VICE worth? How much are we willing to pay and how much more would those damn kids ask for? Valuations of about $1 billion have been going around but VICE cofounder Shane Smith‘s “not interested” has remained rock solid.

You can’t blame the industry for trying. During the last couple of years VICE has become more relevant to the younger demographic than most of its colleague media outlets.

I wrote my first article on the “new VICE” at the release of the “VICE guide to North Korea”five years ago. Today VICE has got thirty-five offices in eighteen countries, almost three million total subscribers on YouTube, a portfolio of websites and when Shane Smith says something like “our goal is to be the largest network for young people in the world” no one is laughing. The ability to mix news journalism with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is a well documented success story.

So what is there to learn? Primarily, what VICE is creating isn’t phenomenal journalism because it’s very phenomenal journalism. Rather, it makes people that otherwise wouldn’t consume news (even under the threat of a gun) to suddenly do so by choice and with a beer in hand. When Dan Rather criticised VICE in CNN‘s “U.S News and World Report” he called one of the VICE shows “more Jackass than journalism” and it’s fair to say that he was spot on in the wrong way. That’s exactly what VICE is and we love them for it.

Attention will always be worth $1 billion and VICE is creating attention better than anyone right now. With YouTube strategies, “content happenings” (like Dennis Rodman‘s basketball bromance in North Korea) and a young and relevant take on the world – they are a reminder of one simple fact; if you produce, you distribute.

No content producer is free from the responsibility of distribution, those days are over. If you’re not ready to also work to get people to discover and consume your content, you might as well not create it at all.

I’d even say the overall quality of the journalism is secondary compared to the ability to attract an audience. The situation is much like being back in school, having that one cool tutor amongst all the traditional stone age ones. On paper that tutor was rarely the most competent one, but in reality he or she was outstanding. Because all of a sudden, we listened.

This story originally appeared on danielkjellsson.com.