A former punk rocker from Ottawa who sports a bushy beard and an undisguised Canadian accent, 35-year-old Shane Smith has become an unlikely media mogul. While far from a Murdoch-like figure -- for one thing, Smith actually does some reporting himself, including trips to Chernobyl and Darfur -- the one-time Reuters correspondent in Bosnia has become famous in hipper media circles for co-founding VICE Magazine and VBS.TV, its spin-off Internet site.

Originally called the Voice of Montréal when it was founded by Smith and two friends in 1994, VICE Magazine has gone from an obscure government-subsidized publication to an unlikely arbiter of global youth culture. When Smith, Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes began, they presented the publication as an outlet for black francophones in Quebec -- a community of mostly Haitians, to which none of them belonged -- so they could all receive government checks. It was, as Smith admits, a welfare scam to earn money while getting the magazine off the ground. When the trio bought out the publication and renamed it VICE, they successfully duped the Canadian media into believing the name change was a result of legal threats from The Village Voice. It earned them extensive coverage in their home country as underdogs fighting the American bully next door.

In 1999, stacks of the free magazine spread across U.S. cities and campuses, and VICE was widely celebrated for its blunt sense of humor and no-bullshit, anti-PC attitude on taboo topics. "Dos and Don'ts," where random people's fashion choices are drooled over or savagely critiqued ("When someone is this clueless it actually gets kind of scary. Like the way a lot of serial killers are autistic and they don't look people in the eye because they don't get what the big deal is with eyes.") is their most recognized feature. Other articles have included "The VICE Guide to Shagging Muslims" and "Grandma Blowjob."

But serving up funny quips about poorly dressed club kids is not their end goal. Over the last few years, VICE has become a media conglomerate. VICE now claims to distribute nearly 900,000 copies monthly in more than 13 editions around the world (new launches this year include Brazil, Mexico and Poland). That's in addition to books, videos, music, a marketing company and the Old Blue Last, a company-owned pub in London. Most audacious and far-reaching is VBS.TV, an online broadcast network.

Between animated station breaks reminiscent of early MTV, VBS offers music videos, artist profiles and DIY journalism. While mainstream media flapped their gums about Paris Hilton and hid out behind blast walls in Baghdad's Green Zone, VICE correspondents hung out in the practice space of an Iraqi heavy metal band, purchased guns in a Pakistan arms market, trekked across Darfur and hunted radioactive animals in Chernobyl's contaminated zone. A recent issue of the magazine was even produced by an all-Iraqi staff.

Shane Smith has played an integral role in VBS. He's filed reports from around the world and will soon be featured in a VBS series about North Korea. Playboy.com spoke to Smith about unbiased reporting, boomer dominance and how boozing all night in North Korea is just another part of building a new media empire.