I'd like you to consider something.
I don't know if it's the exact same at Vice, but the business model of a lot of magazines, including one I recently worked at, is as such: you can't afford to be all about NEWS and CONTENT CREATION (NOC, so you have to fill with OPINION/CRITIQUE and CONTENT CURATION (OC/CC).
For NOC, the magazine has to invest money. A lot of money. They have to send a journalist somewhere for an interview, to break a story, to take pictures. They hire a famous writer who has an exclusive point of view, experience, or timely confession. NOCs are Titan pieces. They carry an issue. The publisher invests because they assume they'll make a return on investment, because you and I will pay to read about Hunter S. Thompson's trip to North Korea (fictional, obvi).
Now, because most of the budget has been sunk into the success of the NOC - Titan, the magazine has to rely upon a OC/CC to fill the rest of an issue. That means staff writers and freelancers are going to come in, say their piece about a trending issue or topic, and put both their and the magazine's stamp and angle on it. Apart from paying per word or for licensing/syndication, OC/CC, compared to NOC, is cheap.
The magazine that I worked at depended on donations, government subsidies, and in-magazine and online advertising. Physical subscriptions are dropping everywhere, which has triggered an even greater disequilibrium re: the ratio of NOC to OC/CC...
After staff salaries, all the money that this one particular magazine money went [mainly] to Titans. That means there was a lot of OC/CC. The OC/CC was o-k, but it wasn't great. They key was, however, that the magazine wasn't judged on the quality of its OC/CC but on its NOC - Titans. The OC/CC more or less floated the Titans and kept the spirit of the magazine alive (and financially viable).
I feel, with regards to Vice, that you should similarly judge it based on its NOC - Titans, and that if you do, you might find that it's still perched pretty high up on that hill. The OC/CC have the "smack-yah, teach-yah" feel they've always had, and the Titans are still brutal and scathing, with enough punch to carry each issue.
The only critique I have is this one:
Culturally, America has shifted left in a big way in the past fifteen years, and even before then. In a society that is majority right-wing, or at least is led by a right-wing leader (e.g. Reagan, Bush, etc.), a left-wing periodical has additional perceived sting. However, when society shifts to the point where, by and large, the majority opinion reflects--if not the spirit, then--the underpinning thesis of your periodical's argument, then you've lost your sting. By going for subversive centrism, whereby left and right are both targets, Vice can maximize its sting. MHO.