Vice Media has appointed Nancy Dubuc, the former head of the A&E Networks, to be its chief executive as the company tries to rebound from sexual misconduct allegations.
Dubuc had stepped down Monday at A&E. She’s been a Vice board member and worked with the company to develop the Viceland cable network. Shane Smith, the company’s co-founder, said that he’ll let Dubuc run the company as he concentrates on making deals and creating content.
Vice has grown exponentially since its founding as a rock fan magazine in Canada in the early 1990s. It produces news and lifestyle material over a variety of platforms and is especially popular among young consumers.
Smith said he will become the company’s executive chairman.
“I get to work with one of my best friends and media heroes,” he said. “We are a modern day Bonnie and Clyde and we are going to take all of your money.”
Dubuc called it one of the rare moments in a career to work with the creative people at Vice.
Vice has apologized for a “boy’s club” culture at Vice that was uncovered in an investigation by The New York Times, which said it had talked to more than two dozen women who had experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct there. Vice suspended its president, Andrew Creighton, and chief digital officer, Mike Germano, in January as it investigated allegations against them. The Times said it had found four settlements involving harassment or defamation accusations.
Vice promised to make half of its workplace female by the year 2020 and have pay parity by the end of this year.
Review: Writer-Director Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man”
Imagine you could wake up one morning, stand at the mirror, and literally peel off any part of your looks you don't like — with only movie-star beauty remaining.
How would it change your life? How SHOULD it change your life?
That's a question – well, a launching point, really — for Edward, protagonist of Aaron Schimberg's fascinating, genre-bending, undeniably provocative and occasionally frustrating "A Different Man," featuring a stellar trio of Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve.
The very title is open to multiple interpretations. Who (and what) is "different"? The original Edward, who has neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes bulging tumors on his face? Or the man he becomes when he's able to slip out of that skin? And is he "different" to others, or to himself?
When we meet Edward, a struggling actor in New York (Stan, in elaborate makeup), he's filming some sort of commercial. We soon learn it's an instructional video on how to behave around colleagues with deformities. But even there, the director stops him, offering changes. "Wouldn't want to scare anyone," he says.
On Edward's way home on the subway, people stare. Back at his small apartment building, he meets a young woman in the hallway, in the midst of moving to the flat next door. She winces visibly when she first sees him, as virtually everyone does.
But later, Ingrid (Reinsve) tries to make it up to him, coming over to chat. She is charming and forthright, and tells Edward she's a budding playwright.
Edward goes for a medical checkup and learns that one of his tumors is slowly progressing over the eye. But he's also told of an experimental trial he could join. With the possibility — maybe — of a cure.
So... Read More