In March 2014, VICE Media, the leading global youth brand, announced the launch of a dedicated digital news channel, VICE News. The launch arrived at a time when young viewers were abandoning legacy and traditional news outlets, fueling the conventional wisdom that young people didn't care about news.

VICE News set out to prove that contrary to public opinion, young audiences didn't like the way news was being presented to them. They were disenfranchised with the existing offerings.

In a highly competitive and rapidly shifting media landscape, VICE’s public relations division was tasked with executing a year-long global campaign to:

A. Attract millions of new viewers and subscribers to VICE News

B. Win the credibility and respect of influential journalism communities

C. Position VICE News at forefront of journalistic innovation by using the latest digital tools in the field.

A year in VICE News has been widely recognized as the preeminent pioneer of new journalism and at the forefront of digital innovation. The BBC Future of News Report commented: “it has demonstrated that a market exists for in-depth foreign news using a tone that is particularly appealing to younger audiences.” While the New York Times suggested that “VICE is deadly serious about doing real news that people, yes, even young people, will actually watch.”

In one short year, VICE News has taken home 2 Peabody’s with a host of other awards including the Knight Foundation Award, British Media Award, multiple Webby Awards, and the Frontline Club award.

Prior to launch, VICE PR had planned an aggressive sustained roll-out across platforms to coincide with the site’s launch date of April 1. However, with news breaking about Crimea in early March, and VICE News securing exclusive coverage there, VICE staff decided to launch VICE News on March 4.

Mirroring CNN’s coming-of-age moment during the Gulf War, VICE News owned the best coverage of a crisis that was captivating the world.

Within 24 hours, VICE’s Public Relations had booked its correspondents in Ukraine on every major network and in many print stories.

Utilizing the very broadcast news channels that VICE News challenged with its launch, the channel’s correspondents were aggressively booked on shows and keynote speeches to discuss the new news format. The plan garnered widespread praise with headlines including “The Future of News is VICE” and “Traditionalists Get a Bit of Bad News With Launch of VICE News.”

Since launch in March 2014, VICE News has become the fastest growing news channel on YouTube with over 1 million subscribers, 1.3 million Facebook fans, and over 400k Twitter followers.

VICE News’ award-winning programming has been viewed over 245 million times on YouTube and syndicated and watched across linear television, amassing tens of millions of video views that demonstrating the channel’s commitment to staying with a story throughout the ever-changing news agenda.

The BBC’s Louisa Compton stated that VICE News had “taught the BBC’s news department lessons across the board.” Reuters Institute for Journalism identified the channel as “stealing audiences from traditional media by using a human, first-person, street-view of stories that appeals to younger news consumers.” The late David Carr of the New York Times, described some of VICE News’ content as “a win for an audience hungry to understand why some of the world hates us so much.”