Vice’s new owners are preparing to wipe out what’s left of the workforce

Executives at Vice Media plan to lay off hundreds of employees in the coming week, eliminating staff from its digital publishing division, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The cuts will be the latest in a series of severe cuts the company has endured in recent years, sinking the global digital behemoth to a shell of its former self. Over the past five years, Vice has suffered almost annual layoffs and mounting losses and filed for bankruptcy, making it the poster child for the battered digital media industry.

When Vice went bankrupt last year, some observers hoped that its new owners – a consortium led by private equity firm Fortress Investment Group – would reinvest to help the company grow again.

Instead, Fortress has decided to make major budget cuts as part of an effort to stem the endless flow of red ink. The company plans to inform employees about the new business strategy in the coming week.

Vice had no immediate comment.

The layoffs come amid stormy headwinds for the entire media industry. Over the past year, nearly every major news publisher, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Vox Media and The Los Angeles Times, has made cuts. Web traffic to news organizations has declined dramatically as users spend time with non-traditional media forms like TikTok and Instagram.

Vice was in poor shape before this planned wave of cuts. The company has been regularly put up for sale over the past two years as long-promised profits failed to materialize. As the business environment for digital media became increasingly uncertain, executives gambled on big, expansive content deals for clients like cigarette maker Philip Morris International and Antenna, a Greek media company.

When the Antenna deal ended last year, Vice’s financial situation became desperate and the company fell into bankruptcy. But even after a court-supervised sale process, the company struggled to become profitable, and the bills continued to pile up.

Founded more than two decades ago as a punk magazine in Montreal, Vice rode a rising tide of investment from media heavyweights like A&E Networks, Disney and private equity firm TPG to a valuation of $5.7 billion. But the company suffered a dramatic turnaround and struggled to live up to its eye-popping valuation as the digital media market collapsed, leaving financial backers and employees without a return on their investment.