Utilizing diverse voices in media is a proven tactic for building objectivity in storytelling. One of the pathways for achieving this is through ownership and two Black founders are reportedly seizing a golden opportunity.
Group Black, a company that aims to invest in and grow Black-owned media firms, reportedly submitted a bid to acquire Vice Media for around $400 million, per the Wall Street Journal.
Group Black, co-founded in 2021 by Travis Montaque, Richelieu Dennis and Bonin Bough, was launched to help bolster the amount of Black-owned media entities, mainly by acquiring existing high-profile media brands and platforming adding more multicultural influences, according to Montaque in a 2022 interview with WSJ.
The deal would help end a string of troubles that began a few years ago for Vice, a company that was once valued at $5.7 billion in 2017.
According to WSJ, Vice Media has been on Group Black’s radar for a while now, several months to be exact. The company initially had been seeking a sale at a $1.5 billion valuation and was in talks with Greek broadcaster Antenna Group, but those talks never resulted in a deal the outlet reported.
Vice Media umbrellas online-publishing brands Vice, Refinery29 and tech specialist Motherboard, as well as the Vice TV channel, Vice Studios and the Virtue ad agency.
If the deal goes through, it will be a victory in an arduous fight to diversify ownership in media. Entrepreneurs like Diddy and Byron Allen have called out the meager Black representation the industry currently boasts.
“We need to own our networks, control the narrative, control how we’re produced and depicted and seen around the world — and until all of our voices are heard, then we don’t really have a true democracy,” Allen told CNN after he acquired the once bankrupt Black News Channel last year.