Vice to use Google Glass and drones to deliver breaking news to youth market globally

Topics will span global issues such as war and conflict, crime and drugs, civil unrest and the environment, reported from 35 foreign news bureaus, and will also include feature-length documentaries.

The brand has been heavily recruiting in the UK over the last six months to prepare for the launch, having hired over a dozen journalists, producers and film-makers and editors – among them former Dispatches editor Kevin Sutcliffe as head of news programming, EU.

The UK hires mark the latest in a string of new appointments to the Vice UK team including a new managing director Matt O'Mara and marketing director Jo Pocock.

The Vice News team is currently producing dozens of original videos every month for the beta site. This will ramp up to hundreds of hours of premium original content over the year.

The channel has been created to “fill the void” left by mainstream media and news aggregation sites which “struggle to engage” with young audiences.

It will feature long and short-form documentaries and will use Vine and Instagram to report news along with live-streaming from major global events.

All content will sit on vicenews.com, while YouTube will become the hub for the vertical’s online distribution plan, with content also to be seeded across Google+, Maps, Chrome, and Vice News’ native Android app. Vice will also be looking to distribute content to online publishers and linear TV channels.

The news follows the launch of the brand's food vertical, launched in partnership with TV production house FremantleMedia.