Former Vice Media editor says company killed stories over ‘brand partner’ concerns
4:12 p.m. | Oct. 2, 2014
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By all accounts, the brief tenure of Charles Davis as an associate editor working out of the Los Angeles bureau for Vice Media was not a happy one.
He showed promise when he was hired in July, after having written a couple of successful stories for the company as a freelancer, the first one dating back to late 2012.
But he was dismissed less than two months later, and shortly afterward, Davis went public with a series of accusations against his former employer, backed up by screenshots of emails he posted this week to Twitter, suggesting that the company had killed articles he’d written because of potential conflicts with advertisers and “brand partners” of the company.
Today, some of those tweets were published by Gawker, where in late May a piece was published citing a number of anonymous sources and former Vice Media staffers who said that Vice had edited stories to make them more palatable to sponsors, citing several specific incidents. At the time, Vice denied the story categorically.
Davis’ accusations, if true, complicate that denial. And Davis, who to be sure is a motivated source, told Capital that he believes he was fired after repeatedly writing stories that offended brands, and for his greenlighting of an anti-N.F.L. story from an independent journalist without first “running it up the flagpole” to get it approved by officers of the company.
Davis, now 30, had his first freelance story for Vice.com published on Dec. 21, 2012. On Dec. 2, 2013, Vice published a story of his about unpaid labor among liberal media organizations. In January, he followed that up with a story about unpaid labor at the South by Southwest festival. At this year’s festival, which took place in March, Vice Media co-sponsored an event venue with AT&T.
After reporting the story and submitting a draft to a senior editor in Vice Media’s New York office, Davis received the following email, dated Feb 7, that seemed to indicate the story was well received by his immediate editor but caused some trouble at the company:
Thanks! Gonna edit this and also the SXSW piece, which I want to post early next week, soon. FYI you really stirring some shit with that piece and we're having a bunch of discussions about it. Basically we're now worried that an event we're doing with AT&T at festival might violate those same labor laws SXSW is violating... anyway, let's not worry about that for the moment.”
On Feb. 14, the same editor emailed Davis to put him in touch with a fact-checker on the story and let him know that because of the story’s sensitive subject matter, Vice wanted both a lawyer and its editor-in-chief to review the story. “I made some small changes to your edit, but nothing major. I'm also going to have the lawyer and our EIC read it. I think it's in good shape now though,” the editor wrote.
On Feb. 18, the same editor sent him an urgent email: “I have to talk to you about the SXSW piece. Your # still the same?”
Davis says that the editor told him on the phone that the editor-in-chief had signed off on the piece, but someone from the marketing side of the company killed it.
A person in Vice’s New York office with knowledge of the story’s fate told Capital that it had been killed for “editorial reasons that had nothing to do with AT&T,” though what Davis was told may be another matter.
Davis later submitted the article to Salon.com, which published it, under the title “South by Southwest’s unpaid labor problem: why it’s risking a class action lawsuit,” on Feb. 26.
But for all that drama, in July, Vice Media hired Davis as an associate editor for Vice.com, based in its Los Angeles office. He worked with associate editor Dave Schilling and West Coast editor Jamie Taete.
In September, Davis says Vice killed another two of his pieces, one about unpaid labor in Hollywood, and another containing explosive allegations of sexual assault against a rock musician and a major Hollywood figure.
On Sept. 4, Davis emailed Schilling and Taete to ask what was happening with them. According to an email obtained by Capital, Taete replied that he had a call with Alex Miller, the company’s global head of content, and would ask Miller for an update on them.
On Sept. 10, Taete wrote back to say that Miller asked to hold the piece about the two celebrities, and Schilling replied that “Alex said no to the unpaid Hollywood piece,” the other one. Davis then emailed Miller to ask why his piece had been killed but received no response, he says. He later pitched the article to a different magazine, The Baffler, which published it online yesterday.
It is difficult to make sense of some of these events given Vice’s reputation. The company began life as a Canadian punk magazine full of raunchy, not-safe-for-work content, and mainstream brands are thought to have flocked to do business with the company because of its countercultural cachet, not in spite of it.
And Vice has often actually published stories that were bad news for brands with which the company does business or might need to do business, whatever the process behind their publication. Consider this post on the National Football League in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal; this post about Google’s response to the N.S.A. surveillance story (Vice Media has an extensive relationship with Google and YouTube); or this piece on how the Amazon Fire is “the most polluting smartphone” (Vice worked with AT&T on the ad campaign for the phone).
But there are other indications that Vice is trying to grow out of its old image. On Sept. 12, Vice deputy editor Jonathan Smith sent the following email to editorial staffers:
Hey everyone,
Moving forward all NSFW content needs to be approved by either Alex Miller or myself before going live on the site. There's not going to be a sea change in editorial direction or anything, but there does need to be an approval process in place before the racier stuff is published. Sorry for the extra step, but it's necessary. If you have any questions contact me off chain please.
Thanks.
Another email suggests that a similar pre-approval policy is in place for posts that mention powerful brands.
On Sept. 8, Davis accepted a pitch from journalist Michael Tracey about the N.F.L.. Davis edited the post, titled “It’s Time to Start Boycotting the N.F.L.,” and sent it to a senior editor in New York for final edits. The piece was posted on Sept. 12. Shortly after it was published, the senior editor at Vice emailed Davis, chastising him for not first getting the post approved by Hosi Simon, the general manager of Vice Media:
Hey, Jonathan asked me to remind you that any "brand" mention—basically any mention of a large entity that we might be making some kind of business deal with—should get run up the flagpole to Hosi (who in my experience simply says "ok" to almost anything). Apparently some people upstairs weren't happy with the NFL post—I doubt they would have told you not to run it, but they would probably have liked to know that it was coming.”
On Sept. 17, a BBC producer reached out to Tracey and asked him to discuss the story on BBC Newshour. Tracey forwarded the email to Davis and two editors in New York, who he had worked with, and then appeared on the program. Tracey soon heard from a senior editor, who told him Vice higher-ups were unhappy with the appearance.
“Sorry man, you have to turn this down—with our sports site, we have to deal with a lot of [t]he NFL’s people for access to videos. Putting your piece front and center is gonna potentially hurt other projects we’re working on right now,” he emailed Tracey.
The same editor later emailed Davis:
“Christ. You remember the part where we talked about how people weren't happy with the NFL post in the first place? Those same people also really didn't want the piece highlighted by the BBC. I know you guys are sort of out on your own there in LA and no one probably told you to do this, but you have to let the communications department know about media requests.”
FYI I forwarded Tracey's email over to the head communications guy and he said "absolutely not.” This is the kind of thing people around here get PISSED about—they don't know you, they don't know Tracey, all they see is this article that (to their mind anyway) is potentially fucking things up for them.”
On Sept. 22, the Monday after Tracey appeared on BBC Newshour, Davis returned from lunch to find that Vice had seized his laptop, he said. According to his account, he was then taken into a conference room where he saw Taete and a man in a suit he did not recognize, who he assumed was someone from Vice Media’s human resources department, and was told that his position had been eliminated.
The reason he was given, he said, was that Miller, the global head of content, did not want any content for Vice.com produced out of the L.A. office. Davis doubted this rationale, since his editors Taete and Schilling continue to produce Vice.com content out of the L.A. office, but accepted it and signed termination papers.
Davis told Capital that, as far as he knows, he was not fired “for cause.” A Vice source told Gawker (and Capital) that Davis was fired for falling asleep during a meeting, but Davis said that he does not remember falling asleep during a meeting and none of his superiors ever criticized him for doing so. The only feedback he ever got from his superiors was positive, he said. His editors even submitted his story on unpaid labor among media companies for a Society of Professional Journalists award.
Davis’ termination packet included an application for California unemployment benefits, which suggests that he was not fired “for cause” in any legal sense. In general, employees fired “for cause” are not eligible for unemployment benefits.
In a series of conversations with Capital, a Vice Media spokesman confirmed that Vice had killed Davis’ stories, but denied that it had anything to do with their effects on brand partnerships. The spokesman said that Vice does not have a policy whereby editors must get “brand” stories approved by corporate, though he added that editors are encouraged to let corporate know about stories involving brand partners so that they can give their partners a “heads up” that the story is coming.
A Vice spokesman told Capital that writers who submit freelance pieces to Vice are not required to submit media requests to the communications department for approval. However, he said, the communications department encourages both freelancers and Vice staffers to submit media requests to the communications department so that the company’s P.R. people can help coordinate media coverage.
A copy of Vice’s handbook, obtained by Capital, states the following: “Employees, with the exception of those officially designated as a Company spokesperson, are prohibited from commenting or providing documents or information to members of the media … Employees must immediately report all media inquiries from media outlets about the Company’s business to the Communications Director or a Senior Manager before any response is made to the inquiry.”
As for Davis’ account of what happened to these specific stories, Vice P.R. staffers presented with all of the details we’re reporting here have not commented beyond the above, as of press time. We will update this story with any new information that comes from Vice P.R.
