Vice Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, several media outlets reported on Monday.
The legal filing is said not to affect the day-to-day operations of Vice, its ad agency Virtue, Pulse Films and Refinery29, The New York Times reported.
Earlier this year, the company shut down Vice World News and Vice News Night, resulting in more than 100 layoffs, Vice reported.
At one point Vice had been worth $5.7 billion and its executives had planned on taking the company public, the Times reported.
Vice itself reported that that filing could mean the sale of the company to Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management for $225 million.
The Associated Press said the deal would be in exchange for credit from Fortress and Soros but that other companies could also bid for Vice. The sale is set to be done in the next two to three months.
Fortress and Soros submitted a bid for the company that would account for the loans the two companies had already given Vice. Fortress and Soros will also take over “significant liabilities” after a sale of Vice closes, the Times reported.
Vice competitors such as BuzzFeed and Vox have also felt the effects of digital news, with BuzzFeed shutting down its news division and Vox having about half the value it did in 2015, the Times reported.
There have also been layoffs at Gannett, NPR and The Washington Post, the AP reported.
All three companies used a business model that banked on bringing in readers from social media platforms such as Facebook.
“There are definitely commonalities in the hardships media organizations have been facing and Vice is no exception,” S. Mitra Kalita, the founder and publisher of Epicenter-NYC, told the Times. “We now know that a brand tethered to social media for its growth and audience alone is not sustainable.”
