Shane Smith is trading in the board room for the newsroom at Vice Media.
The brash co-founder of Vice Media will become a correspondent for Vice News, returning to a role creating content for the media brand, which filed for bankruptcy protection a year ago, and laid off much of its staff earlier this year in a major restructuring.
Smith will also host a podcast for Bill Maher’s Club Random Studios Network called Vice News: The Truth. The video podcast, which will occasionally feature Maher, will debut this summer and also run on Vice’s TV channel.
Maher was a producer on Vice’s HBO series, which frequently featured Smith.
Vice says that Smith will also appear on other news networks commentating on the 2024 election, and will produce content for Vice News’ social channels.
Smith had been executive chairman of Vice, and he led a quixotic attempt to salvage the company as it was on the verge of collapse, as The Hollywood Reporter detailed in February. The company has since been cutting staff and cutting costs. Last month Vice and Savage Ventures launched a JV to “relaunch and grow Vice’s digital businesses including vice.com, Munchies, Motherboard, and Noisey as well as all associated social platforms, YouTube channels, and websites.”
The return of Smith to Vice News suggests that it, too, may try to make a comeback, with the 2024 election as a peg.
“This presidential election might just be the craziest yet – and that’s saying something,” said Smith in a statement. “Working with Bill again as well as top political pundits, media personalities, and social stars, we will dissect what is real, what is fake, and what narrative is being pushed as social media explodes with ever more insane memes and theories. We hope to uncover the truth and sheer bull-goose lunacy of the main political events of the year. Wherever the story takes us, we will follow; however nuts it seems we will investigate; whatever the truth is, it promises to be the opposite of boring.”
“Producing the Viceshow was a career highlight for me, and I’m thrilled to be getting the band back together with Shane for a podcast about examining something that we both care deeply about; the search for facts,” added Maher.
Maher launched his podcast network in March, telling THR at the time “I am looking for people who are not talking-point people. I’m looking for people who don’t, before they speak, say, ‘What’s the right answer here?’”
