Vice Media has laid off 15 people amid a news division reorganization that will put Josh Tyrangiel in charge of the company's entire global news operation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The restructuring will combine Vice's online news division with those working on the company's weekly televised news magazine on HBO and the daily news show slated to launch later this year, the person said. Mr. Tyrangiel, who left Bloomberg Businessweek last year to run Vice's upcoming daily program on HBO, will oversee the combined operation.
"The plan in place will expand Vice's news offerings across digital and TV, continue the recent wave of newsroom hires, add additional foreign bureaus, and marshal the company's existing news divisions into one cohesive powerhouse," the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Staffers in New York, Los Angeles and London, including producers, writers and some editors, were among those affected by the layoffs, the person said. A spokesman for the Writer's Guild, East, the union that represents Vice's editorial writers, said some union-covered staffers were among those let go but that other, non-unionized employees were also impacted.
The job cuts and Mr. Tyrangiel's promotion were earlier reported by Politico.
The company says it employs around 2,000 people globally—with approximately 750 in New York, 150 in Los Angeles and 200 in London.
The layoffs come as the company has made some high-profile hires ahead of the launch of the HBO daily show, including Madeleine Haeringer from MSNBC, and Ravi Somaiya and Ryan McCarthy from the New York Times.
The company is also planning on adding staff in the coming months in Hong Kong and San Francisco, the person familiar with the matter said.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
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