The new head of Vice News just laid off 20 staffers in a global restructuring

Vice News has cut around 20 staff from its global bureaus in a restructuring resulting from Josh Tyrangiel's appointment to oversee the media company's entire news operation, a source familiar with the plans told Business Insider. 

Tyrangiel joined Vice from Bloomberg in late 2015 to head up the daily news show on HBO. His role was recently expanded to take on responsibility for the entire news division at the company.

The source said that the news organization has laid off 15 US staffers, 3 UK Vice News writers, and two foreign correspondents. Politico first reported the news of the layoffs.

Vice News has also recently made various high profile hires, including: Ryan McCarthy, formerly assistant editor on the national desk at The New York Times, as editor-in-chief of Vice News; Madeleine Haeringer from MSNBC as executive producer of Vice's new HBO nightly show, and New York Times media reporter Ravi Somaiya as tech correspondent. More new hires are expected in the coming weeks.

The restructuring at Vice News aims to unite its three separate news divisions: Vice News, the weekly Vice News show on HBO, and the new daily Vice News show, also on HBO.

"The plan in place will expand Vice's news offerings across digital and TV, continue the recent of wave of newsroom hires, add additional foreign bureaus, and marshal the company's existing news divisions into one cohesive powerhouse," a spokesperson from Vice told Business Insider.

On Tuesday night, the now former Vice News correspondent Harriet Salem tweeted that the entire Vice News editorial team in the UK had been laid off, along with big cuts in the US:

However, a source familiar with the plan told Business Insider that this claim is misleading. 18 of Vice News' staff in the UK work in video production, as editors, researchers, producers, and hosts. These staff will remain a part of Vice News, though the three staff working on Vice News' written output have lost their jobs.

The source also hinted that a well-known UK news figure will soon be confirmed to be heading up the Vice News operation in the UK.

Over the next few months, Vice News also plans to open new bureaus in San Francisco and Hong Kong.