Being the crusty old-media scold felt good at the time, but recent events suggest that Vice is deadly serious about doing real news that people, yes, even young people, will actually watch. And given that Vice has been in talks with Time Warner for a partnership that may include its bringing its guerrilla aesthetic to an entire news channel, it’s worth looking at its growth and development as a source of hard news.

Last year, Vice gained a share of infamy by getting access to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the notoriously secretive country he leads through a caper involving Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters, a stunt that drew attention, invective and clicks. In March, Vice christened Vice News as a separate entity and joined with YouTube on a news channel. Almost immediately, the Vice reporter Simon Ostrovsky began filing remarkable dispatches from Ukraine and was, for his trouble, kidnapped in April. (He was freed after a few days.)
—David Carr, Its Edge Intact, Vice Is Chasing Hard News