Thump - another one bites the dust
Thump - another one bites the dust FLASHPOP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Slick, hipster media giant Vice just laid off 2 percent of their staff and is closing Thump, an site publishing journalism about electronic and dance music and culture since 2013, Resident Advisor has reported. The Brooklyn-based company, worth a whopping $5.7 billion dollars, will now be focusing their growth on—you guessed it: VIDEOS!

MTV News just pulled a similar pivot last month, laying off some of their finest culture and politics writers in favor of “short-form video content.” Only a year ago, they were touting their switch to long-form, so what gives?

Apparently, what gives is that banner ads make for bad revenue, and even though an MTV spokesperson explained that videos are “more in line with young people's media consumption habits” (read: blame millennials and their damn short attention spans!), we all know the bottom line is those sweet, sweet online advertising dollas.

Over the three years that Thump has been publishing, there’ve been some mighty fine articles—like this in-depth character study of “Party Monster” Michael Alig, this important piece about what happens when white producers making house and techno co-opt black identity and use it as a marketing device, and this hilarious firsthand account of the ill-fated Fyre Festival.

Personally, I fucking hate videos, and am sorry to see another blow to the slowly-draining lifeblood of long-form music journalism.

Former Thump editor Michelle Lhooq posted what became Thump’s final story on Twitter: