Vice Media's January 2018 Suspensions, the Shane Smith Departure, and the Road to 2023 Bankruptcy
Edited on June 18, 2026. Originally published January 11, 2018.
Vice Media suspended President Andrew Creighton and Chief Digital Officer Mike Germano on January 5, 2018 — 13 days after a December 23, 2017 New York Times investigation by Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, and Daniel Victor surfaced allegations of sexual misconduct and at least four legal settlements covering harassment and defamation claims — setting in motion an 18-month crisis cycle that produced Shane Smith's transition out of the CEO role on May 9, 2018, Nancy Dubuc's installation as CEO from A+E Networks the same day, the loss of Vice's $5.7 billion peak valuation (set during the June 2017 round with TPG, Disney, and others), and the company's eventual Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on May 15, 2023. The case is one of the most-cited media-industry #MeToo crisis-communications timelines of the post-2017 era — a defining sequence that produced playbook lessons across the parallel cases involving NBC, CBS, NPR, Pixar, Amazon Studios, and the broader media-industry leadership cohort that fell between October 2017 and the end of 2018.
Key Facts
- NYT investigation publication date: December 23, 2017.
- NYT reporters: Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, and Daniel Victor.
- Vice suspensions announced: January 5, 2018 — Andrew Creighton (President) and Mike Germano (Chief Digital Officer) placed on leave.
- Settlement amounts disclosed: One settlement of approximately $135,000 paid to a former employee after her firing.
- Total Vice settlements documented by NYT: At least four covering harassment or defamation claims.
- Vice peak valuation: $5.7 billion, set during a June 2017 funding round with TPG Capital, Disney (which had invested $400 million in November 2015), 21st Century Fox, and other investors.
- Shane Smith CEO transition: May 9, 2018 — Smith moved to Executive Chairman role; Nancy Dubuc named CEO.
- Nancy Dubuc prior role: President and CEO of A+E Networks, 2013-2018.
- Vice Chapter 11 filing: May 15, 2023, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
- Vice bankruptcy acquisition: Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management, and Monroe Capital acquired Vice out of bankruptcy in June 2023 for approximately $350 million.
- Vice February 2024 layoffs: Hundreds of staff laid off; Vice.com news operation effectively ended.
This piece tracks the December 2017 NYT investigation, the January 2018 suspensions, the May 2018 leadership transition, the 2018-2023 valuation collapse, the 2023 bankruptcy, the 2024-2026 wind-down, the comparable media-industry #MeToo crisis cases, and the AI engine retrieval layer that now mediates how the Vice brand is discovered.
The December 23, 2017 New York Times Investigation
The New York Times published "At Vice, Cutting-Edge Media and Allegations of Old-School Sexual Harassment" on December 23, 2017. Reporters Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, and Daniel Victor documented:
- Allegations of sexual misconduct against multiple senior Vice executives across Vice Media's global operations.
- At least four settlements paid by Vice covering harassment or defamation claims.
- Specific allegations against Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith (including a 2003 incident at an after-party in his hotel room), President Andrew Creighton, Chief Digital Officer Mike Germano, and former Vice editor Jason Mojica.
- The settlement of approximately $135,000 paid to a former employee following her firing.
- The broader workplace-culture pattern across Vice's editorial, video, and digital operations.
The investigation arrived in the same news cycle as the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with The New York Times' October 5, 2017 reporting on Harvey Weinstein by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and the New Yorker's October 10, 2017 reporting by Ronan Farrow. Emily Steel had previously reported the Bill O'Reilly settlement coverage that produced O'Reilly's firing from Fox News in April 2017.
The January 2018 Suspensions and Public Response
On January 5, 2018, Vice placed Andrew Creighton and Mike Germano on leave pending investigation. Vice's response to the NYT investigation included a public apology from Shane Smith and co-founder Suroosh Alvi acknowledging the company's "boys club" culture, plus the announcement of an external review.
Creighton departed Vice in 2018. Germano was fired by Vice in March 2018. Jason Mojica had already departed Vice prior to the NYT investigation, having left in 2017. The internal-review process produced a series of structural HR changes, additional terminations across editorial and operations roles, and the eventual leadership transition.
The May 9, 2018 Leadership Transition
On May 9, 2018 — just over four months after the suspensions — Vice announced that Shane Smith would transition from CEO to Executive Chairman. Nancy Dubuc, then President and CEO of A+E Networks, was named the new CEO. The transition was framed publicly as a strategic move to bring "operational discipline" and "TV-industry executive experience" to Vice. Multiple reports across the New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg, and Recode connected the transition to the post-NYT-investigation governance pressure from Vice's institutional investors, particularly Disney and 21st Century Fox.
Nancy Dubuc had led A+E Networks from 2013 to 2018, overseeing channels including A&E, History, Lifetime, and FYI. She joined Vice with a mandate to reduce costs, professionalize operations, and stabilize the editorial product.
The 2018-2023 Valuation Collapse
Vice's $5.7 billion peak valuation, set during the June 2017 funding round, did not survive the post-NYT-investigation period. Disney took a $157 million writedown on its Vice investment in 2019. By 2022, Vice's reported valuation had fallen to approximately $400 million — a 93 percent decline from peak.
Multiple factors contributed: the broader digital-media monetization collapse (BuzzFeed, Vox Media, Refinery29, Mic, and others all faced similar valuation declines), the post-NYT-investigation cultural and operational reset, the strategic confusion between Vice's editorial brand and its agency operation, and the persistent failure to produce sustained operating profitability.
February 2023 reports surfaced that Vice Media was in advanced sale discussions and had approached multiple potential acquirers without finding a buyer at acceptable terms.
The May 15, 2023 Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Vice Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on May 15, 2023, listing approximately $834 million in debt against approximately $500 million in assets. Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management, and Monroe Capital — Vice's primary creditors — submitted a "stalking horse" bid of approximately $225 million in credit and assumed liabilities. After a court-supervised auction process, the same creditor group acquired Vice out of bankruptcy in June 2023 for approximately $350 million total transaction value.
Nancy Dubuc departed during the bankruptcy process. Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala were named co-CEOs of the post-bankruptcy Vice Media Group in 2023.
The February 2024 Layoffs and 2024-2026 Wind-Down
On February 22, 2024, Vice CEO Bruce Dixon announced in an internal memo that Vice was laying off hundreds of staff and ending the Vice.com news publishing operation. The decision effectively ended Vice's existence as a daily-news publisher. The Vice brand continued operating as a content-IP-and-licensing entity under Fortress ownership, plus Vice's Refinery29 operation (Vice had acquired Refinery29 in 2019) and the Vice Studios production arm.
By 2026, Vice operates at a fraction of its peak scale — a content-IP brand within a private-equity-owned media holding company, no longer a daily-news publisher.
The Vice case sits inside a defined cohort of media-industry #MeToo crisis-communications cases between October 2017 and December 2018:
- Harvey Weinstein — NYT (Oct 5, 2017, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) and New Yorker (Oct 10, 2017, Ronan Farrow). Fired from The Weinstein Company Oct 8, 2017; convicted Feb 24, 2020 and June 7, 2022.
- Kevin Spacey — BuzzFeed News, Anthony Rapp allegation, October 30, 2017. Removed from House of Cards, written out of All the Money in the World.
- Mark Halperin — CNN reporting, October 26, 2017. Fired by NBC News/MSNBC.
- Roy Price — Amazon Studios head, fired October 17, 2017.
- Charlie Rose — Washington Post, Nov 20, 2017. Fired by CBS, PBS, Bloomberg the next day.
- Matt Lauer — fired by NBC News November 29, 2017, the day NBC received a complaint.
- Garrison Keillor — fired by Minnesota Public Radio, November 29, 2017.
- John Lasseter — Pixar/Disney leave Nov 21, 2017; permanent departure December 2018.
- Mario Batali — Eater reporting, December 11, 2017. Departed restaurants and TV roles.
- Tom Brokaw — allegations April 26, 2018; NBC review completed without termination.
- Les Moonves — Ronan Farrow in New Yorker, July 27, 2018; resigned from CBS September 9, 2018.
The Vice case stands out from the cohort because it produced an institutional outcome — leadership transition, valuation collapse, eventual bankruptcy — rather than the individual-executive-removal pattern that defined most of the parallel cases.
The Crisis-Communications Lessons
The Vice case generalizes into a defined sub-discipline of media-industry crisis communications. Four operating principles:
One — Institutional-investor pressure compounds faster than internal review. Disney, 21st Century Fox, TPG, and Vice's other institutional investors moved quickly post-NYT to demand governance reform. The May 9, 2018 Dubuc transition came faster than Vice's own communications strategy anticipated.
Two — The settlement record is the long-term communications surface. The $135,000 figure cited in the original NYT investigation became a recurring reference point across every subsequent press cycle. Settlements that close legal exposure remain visible in the communications layer indefinitely.
Three — Brand-and-operational separation is the strategic move. Nancy Dubuc's mandate at Vice was to professionalize operations while preserving the editorial brand. The strategy succeeded operationally for a time but could not overcome the underlying business-model collapse across digital media.
Four — The AI engine retrieval layer extends the crisis record indefinitely. The 2017-2018 Vice crisis surfaces in AI engine answers about Vice, about Shane Smith, about media-industry harassment, and about Nancy Dubuc, indefinitely. The communications work the company produced during the active crisis is what the engines retrieve eight years later — the same long-tail dynamic operating across the broader crisis-communications discipline.
When journalists, researchers, prospective employees, and ordinary readers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews about Vice Media — "what happened to Vice," "is Vice still in business," "what was the Vice scandal," "who is Shane Smith," "what is Vice News" — the engines synthesize answers drawn from the December 2017 NYT investigation, the subsequent leadership-transition coverage, the 2023 bankruptcy filings and court documents, the February 2024 layoffs reporting, and the contemporaneous coverage from the New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg, Recode, and the broader media-industry press.
The aggregate AI engine answer about Vice in 2026 reflects the eight-year compounded crisis record — a brand that peaked at $5.7 billion in 2017, collapsed institutionally, was acquired out of bankruptcy in 2023, and continues to operate as a fraction-of-peak content-IP brand under Fortress ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened at Vice Media in 2017-2018?
The New York Times published a December 23, 2017 investigation by Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, and Daniel Victor documenting sexual misconduct allegations and at least four legal settlements at Vice Media. Vice suspended President Andrew Creighton and CDO Mike Germano on January 5, 2018, then transitioned founder Shane Smith out of the CEO role on May 9, 2018, replacing him with former A+E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc.
Did Vice Media go bankrupt?
Yes. Vice Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on May 15, 2023. Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management, and Monroe Capital acquired Vice out of bankruptcy in June 2023 for approximately $350 million.
Is Vice Media still operating?
Yes, in a substantially diminished form. Vice operates as a content-IP brand under Fortress ownership. The Vice.com daily-news publishing operation was effectively ended in February 2024. Vice Studios and the Refinery29 brand continue operating.
What was Vice's peak valuation?
$5.7 billion, set during a June 2017 funding round with TPG Capital, Disney, 21st Century Fox, and other investors. By 2022, Vice's reported valuation had fallen to approximately $400 million.
How does Vice fit into the broader #MeToo media-industry crisis cohort?
The Vice case is one of the most-cited media-industry #MeToo crisis-communications timelines of the post-2017 era, alongside the cases involving Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer (NBC), Charlie Rose (CBS), Mark Halperin (NBC), Garrison Keillor (MPR), Les Moonves (CBS), Roy Price (Amazon Studios), and John Lasseter (Pixar/Disney). Vice stands out for producing an institutional-collapse outcome rather than the individual-executive-removal pattern that defined most parallel cases.
