By Tim Adams, The Observer @ guardian.co.uk, 23 March, 2013

Twenty years ago Shane Smith set up a hip little Montreal magazine called Vice. Then along came the internet and Vice reinvented itself as the edgiest, wildest online media brand in the world. It's staffed by twentysomethings and aimed at a global youth who have no interest in mainstream media. Which is why he is courted by everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Google. Here he explains what drives his brand of gonzo journalism [....]

If you hadn't heard of Vice media back then, it is likely that now you have. In America, in particular, two archly millennial Vice stories have made the "established media", Murdoch included, look distinctly 20th-century by comparison.

The first involved the on-the-run internet millionaire, John McAfee, whose paranoid tale of drugs, murder and subterfuge in the jungly paradise of Belize dominated the daily news channels and blog sites for a few weeks before Christmas. [....]

The second Vice scoop was perhaps even more incendiary. Last month a documentary film crew from Vice blagged its way into North Korea in the company of the NBA legend, and celebrity rehab casualty, Dennis Rodman, and the Harlem Globetrotters. The Vice crew once again could hardly believe its fortune when Rodman ended up befriending Kim Jong-Un  [....]