Vice Media may be technically bankrupt as of Monday morning, but it couldn’t have gotten this far, or sent so many lantern-jawed journalists to such far-flung places, without a host of committed investors along the way. And it all started with a little bit of seed money from Canadian taxpayers.
The year was 1994 — no one could have known the internet was about to change everything about media — and the government of Canada agreed that Montreal’s thriving underground music, art and culture scene would do well with a bit more print-magazine love. Two years later, the Voice of Montreal was a successful venture, founders Shane Smith, Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes changed the name to Vice, and the world’s wildest digital-media snowball began rolling downhill.