A friend of mine in the cannabis business contacted Vice directly a couple a years ago to get them to write an article about his business. Initially they asked him for something like 1000 eur.
HOWEVER, after discussing, because they found the story of the business very interesting (they were pioneers in the country) they actually did it for free, the only thing that they paid was the reporter's daily salary. So they got a full length article for something like 100 eur. The reporter interviewed the team and eventually didn't even write the artictle. My friend wrote the article himself, sent it to the reporter and after a little bit of back and forth for corrections, the article was posted after a few weeks.
Bare in mind that this was in a European country.
My suggestion would be to get in contact with a reporter that works for Vice. If you have an interesting story, they might actually post it. If it's not relevant though, I doubt they'll give you anything, unless you pay a lot of money obviously.