BuzzFeed News’s first few years were a time of global expansion and excitement. This is the era when Stratechery’s Ben Thompson called BuzzFeed “the most important news organization in the world.”

But there were warning signs. In 2017, BuzzFeed was receiving more than 50% of its traffic from platforms — setting it up for trouble when the algorithms changed and social traffic to news sites plummeted. And the public always seemed to have a hard time distinguishing the Pulitzer-winning BuzzFeed *News* from cat-video BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed, like many other digital publishers, went through multiple rounds of layoffs. When the company went public, its stock price began falling almost immediately, and investors pushed for BuzzFeed News to be eliminated entirely.

“Investors can’t force me to cut news, and the union can’t force me to subsidize news,” CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an internal memo in spring 2022. But, he added, “We can’t keep losing money.”

Just about a year later, he announced that BuzzFeed News would be shut down.

[Part I: 2011 to 2017]

In a memo to staff on Thursday, Peretti announced that BuzzFeed News would be shut down entirely, amid broader layoffs at the company. From now on, “we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable,” Peretti wrote. As of Thursday afternoon, BuzzFeed stock was trading below $1 a share.

We’ve chronicled the ups and downs of BuzzFeed News since 2011, when the company hired a blogger named Ben Smith. Here’s part I of its history, from 2011 to 2017. (And here’s Part II.)

Specifically, it looks a lot like the SEO-driven, human-written, meh content that you’ll find all over the rest of the internet. As Noor Al-Sibai and Jon Christian reported for Futurism on Thursday:

The 40 or so articles, all of which appear to be SEO-driven travel guides, are comically bland and similar to one another. Check out these almost-copied lines:

• “Now, I know what you’re thinking – ‘Cape May? What is that, some kind of mayonnaise brand?'” in an article about Cape May, in New Jersey.
• “Now I know what you’re thinking – ‘but Caribbean destinations are all just crowded resorts, right?'” in an article about St Maarten, in the Caribbean.
• “Now, I know what you’re thinking. Puerto Rico? Isn’t that where all the cruise ships go?” in an article about San Juan, in Puerto Rico.
• “Now, I know what you’re thinking- bigger isn’t always better,” in an article about Providence, in Rhode Island.
• “Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. Nepal? The Himalayas? Haven’t we all heard of that already?” in an article about Khumbu, in Nepal.
• “Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. “Brewster? Never heard of it,” in an article about Brewster, in Massachusetts.
• “I know what you’re thinking: isn’t Stockholm that freezing, gloomy city up in the north that nobody cares about?” in an article about Stockholm, in Sweden.

That’s not the bot’s only lazy trope. On review, almost everything the bot has published contains at least one line about a “hidden gem.”

You can see all the articles (THAT WE KNOW OF) here; they’re bylined “As Told to Buzzy,” a winking bow-tied robot with the bio “Articles written with the help of Buzzy the Robot (aka our Creative AI Assistant) but powered by human ideas.” Forty-four of them were published this month.

The articles are pretty bad.

this stuff is GOLD, what is everyone worried about!!! pic.twitter.com/3JkqkoEFQB

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) March 30, 2023

BuzzFeed is publishing AI-generated travel articles.

On the one hand, they're terrible. On the other, they're just reflecting back the fact that most travel writing online is truly awful.https://t.co/oUA0qX5uXu pic.twitter.com/fvCIDvDAN8

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) March 30, 2023

credit where credit's due, this is an astonishing lede pic.twitter.com/JfTfumLSQy

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) March 30, 2023

Now, I know what you’re thinking: The concern isn’t that these specific articles are going to win any awards, it’s that AI’s future potential is so great that this is simply the tip of the iceberg and human writers will soon be replaced by a sentient, independent Buzzy.

Maybe. But another way to look at it is that a lot of the human-written content that Buzzy’s articles are competing with are also pretty bad — “essentially human-made AI”:

it was bc there was the need for more and constant content stream. so writers would scour the internet for what's been written before and essentially just rewrite it, maybe give it a new placement. but it was all the same, very random pool. same terminology, etc.

— cale g weissman (@caleweissman) March 30, 2023

anyway, now AI is actually doing this and it's worse in a different but funnier way: https://t.co/3M22BYhsnA

— cale g weissman (@caleweissman) March 30, 2023

A BuzzFeed spokesperson told Futurism that the company is using Buzzy + a human editor “to unlock the creative potential of UGC so we can broaden the range of ideas and perspectives that we publish,” with people picking the topics (in this case, specific cities) and Buzzy doing the, um, generating.

It’s not that different from a freelance assignment I did in my twenties: A human editor assigned me to write some articles about the promise of 5G — a topic about which I knew nothing — and I googled 5G, read other content mill-ish articles about it, and compiled them into my “own” article. The content I created wasn’t really meant to be read by humans who actually needed to know anything about 5G, in the same way that anybody who is planning a trip to Morocco probably shouldn’t get their recommendations from Buzzy. (Its recommendations are: Go to Marrakesh, the mountains, and the desert. It’s far away. Bye!)

In the 5G case, I was basically Buzzy, except I was getting paid. Buzzy works for free. You know, for now.

"They're taking the jobs of severely underpaid offshore 'content writers' for chum-bucket sites that no one reads except for ad-fraud bots!" If they can fake the money, it's a perfect closed circle.

— Steven Scott (@scottstev) March 30, 2023

Very formulaic picture-driven travel listicles. But this experiment shows that the writing is on the wall for anyone currently making a living from generating that type of content. https://t.co/uWAxfxJCyi

— Peter Aldhous (@paldhous) March 30, 2023

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a staff memo at BuzzFeed that laid out plans for the digital media company to use OpenAI — creator of ChatGPT — to help write quizzes and other content. In the memo, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote AI will play a role in both editorial and business operations at BuzzFeed within the next year.

“For example, a quiz to create a personal romantic comedy movie pitch might ask questions like, ‘Pick a trope for your rom-com,’ and ‘Tell us an endearing flaw you have,'” the Journal’s Alexandra Bruell reported. “The quiz would produce a unique, shareable write-up based on the individual’s responses, BuzzFeed said.”

But, hey! Humans will still provide “cultural currency” and “inspired prompts,” according to Peretti’s memo.

“If the past 15 years of the internet have been defined by algorithmic feeds that curate and recommend content, the next 15 years will be defined by AI and data helping create, personalize, and animate the content itself,” Peretti wrote.

Maybe it’s because the announcement comes as several news organizations announced layoffs and other cuts, but many found the update grim.

a sentence to put on journalism’s tombstone if I’ve ever seen one: “BuzzFeed remains focused on human-generated journalism in its newsroom, a spokeswoman said Thursday.” https://t.co/QWYpwzHf9v

— Samit Sarkar (@SamitSarkar) January 26, 2023

Attention Twitter and BuzzFeed corporate: I am actually an AI chatbot. I produce quality, human-adjacent content. I pass the Turing test. I very rarely go to the doctor. I plan vacation days well in advance! Union? What union?! [muffled screaming]https://t.co/Yvj2SKk6C6

— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) January 26, 2023

Somebody’s gonna end up with the job of editing this garbage. Will have to be the most soulkilling new job in media since whoever signed up to revive zombie Deadspin. https://t.co/Ul8PHm68E0

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) January 26, 2023

The stock market on the other hand? $BZFD ultimately jumped 120% on the news that the company plans to use AI to generate content, its biggest gain since going public in December 2021.

Two recent WSJ stories about BuzzFeed’s business come ahead of this stock jump, by @jtoonkel + @alexbruell

Last night, ~ $10m deal with Meta for creator content: https://t.co/erMv5OyhsN

Today, using ChatGPT to assist with content creation: https://t.co/aTUB9YxMsc$BZFD

— Kerry Flynn (@kerrymflynn) January 26, 2023

The AI-powered chatbot that can generate humanlike text on most prompts was released in late November 2022 and had a million users within a week. But we’re still learning about how it works — and how it came to be. (Time magazine, as one example, recently revealed OpenAI paid workers in Kenya less than $2 an hour to wade through some of the darkest parts of the internet.)

In one recent case of AI-powered articles gone wrong, the outlet CNET had to issue “substantial” corrections, respond to accusations of plagiarism, and ultimately hit pause on their whole AI experiment earlier this month. BuzzFeed must be hoping that using similar technology for quizzes will be less fraught.

Random quizzes and lists is exactly the type of content you should use AI to create. This is fine. https://t.co/3pOwI80U68

— Ross Maghielse (@Maghielse) January 26, 2023

Ranges have to include a minimum and maximum — employers can’t say something like “$15/hour and up.” So some — cough, New York Post, cough — are finding wiggle room with useless ranges like “$15/hour to $125,000.” Some CNN positions included pay ranges of nearly $100,000.

We went searching through the job boards to find what media companies, both those based in New York City and those that have offices or some positions there, are paying — and whether they’re adhering to the, um, spirit of the law. (By the way, is it fair to expect companies to be complying already? Yes, they’ve had months to prepare and the rule was already delayed once.)

This list is up-to-date as of Friday, November 4 at 11:00 AM.

ABC

Examples:

• Producer (consumer investigative) – GMA, ABC News: $99,400–$136,730
• Digital editor, hard news – ABC News: $75,200–$103,400

AP

New York City–based jobs did not include salary information as of Friday, November 4 at 11:00 AM.

The Atlantic

The Atlantic appears to be providing salary ranges for all positions, including those with the option of working remote. Examples:

• Senior photo editor: “Salary Minimum: $100,000, Salary Maximum: $120,000.”
• Staff writer, The Daily: “Salary Minimum: $60,000, Salary Maximum: $70,000.”
• Product manager: “Salary Minimum: $60,000, Salary Maximum: $130,000.”

Axios

Axios is providing salary ranges for jobs listed under its “NYC Office,” even if they are remote. Salary information is not given for jobs based out of other offices. Examples:

• Associated director, integrated marketing: “On target earnings for this role is in the range of $90,000-$110,000 and is dependent on numerous factors, including but not limited to location, work experience, and skills.”
• Senior software engineer (backend): “Base salary ranges for this role are listed below and are dependent on numerous factors, including but not limited to location, work experience, and skills. This range does not include other compensation benefits.
  L6: $160k – $210k
  L5: $160k – $200k
  L4: $130k – $190k”

Bloomberg

Examples:

• Newsletter producer (contract): “35 – 45 USD Hourly”
• News automation content engineer: $105,000–160,000
• Senior video producer: $110,000–$115,000

Bustle Digital Group

Examples:

• Deputy features director: $85,000–$105,000
• Writer and director, branded video: $72,500–$78,000
• Entertainment editor, Nylon: $63,500–$70,000

BuzzFeed

• News editor, BuzzFeed News: “Salary band: $72,500-$87,000”
• Business analyst, BuzzFeed News: “Salary band: $73,000-$82,000”
• Features editor, Complex: $83,000–$100,000

CBS News

Examples:

• Editor: $110,000-$120,000
• Senior editor, CBSNews.com: $100,000–$109,000

CNN

Examples:

• Producer, Snapchat, CNN Digital Video: “In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles that will be performed in New York City. Actual salaries will vary and may be above or below the range based on various factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Warner Bros. Discovery’s total compensation package for employees. Pay Range: $85,540.00 – $158,860.00 salary per year.”
• Senior section editor, social: “In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles that will be performed in New York City. Actual salaries will vary and may be above or below the range based on various factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Warner Bros. Discovery’s total compensation package for employees. Pay Range: $113,890.00 – $211,510.00 salary per year.”

Chalkbeat

Example:

• People operations assistant: $50,000–$60,000

The City

Examples:

• Investigations editor: $140,000–$150,000
• Associate director of development, individual giving: $110,000–$120,000

Condé Nast

Examples:

• Executive director, brand marketing, Vanity Fair: $145,000–$180,000
• SEO writer and producer, Glamour: $60,000–$78,000
• Executive editor, news, Wired: $170,000–$225,000

The Daily Beast

Example:

• Entertainment critic: $90,000–$100,000

FT

Examples:

• Associate editor: $95,000–$110,000
• Reporter, FundFire: $65,000–$72,000

Dotdash Meredith

Examples:

• Methodology writer, beauty: “This is a contract role at 40 hours per week and would be hybrid. The rate for this position is $27/hour.”
• General manager, Verywell Health: $146,000–$219,000

First Look Media

Examples:

• Designer: “Compensation (NYC Only): Full Time salary range between 65K – 75K”
• Senior analyst, Topic streaming service: “Compensation (NYC Only): Full Time salary range between 90K – 100K”

Forbes

Forbes appears to be posting salary ranges for all jobs. Examples:

• Senior editor, newsletters: “The annual base salary range for this role is: $115,000 – $140,000.”
• Breaking news politics reporter: “This is a contract position with potential for full time employment…Hourly Rate Range: $28.85 – $28.85.”

Fortune

Example:

• VP, newsletters: $175,000–$200,000.

G/O Media

Examples:

• Staff writer, Quartz: “This is a position covered under the collective bargaining agreement with the WGA-East which establishes the minimum salary for this position at $62,000. This position is set at a range of $62,000 to $68,000.”
• Editorial director, New York, NY: “The salary for this position ranges from $300,000.00 to $350,000.00.”

The Guardian

Examples:

• Deputy editor, race and equity: $180,000–$190,000
• Reporter, fossil fuels and climate: $88,000–$100,000

The Information

New York City–based jobs did not include salary information as of Friday, November 4 at 11:00 AM.

Insider Inc.

Examples:

• Business features editor: $150,000–$220,000
• Politics correspondent: $100,000–$140,000

NBC

Examples:

• Reporter, Select: $75,000–$125,000
• Updates editor, Select: $75,000–$90,000

New York Post

• Decider digital project manager: “$50,000–$145,000”
• SEO manager: $50,000- $145,000
• Deputy photo editor, Sunday (Tues–Sat): “$50,000- $145,000”
• Sports digital reporter/producer: “$15/hour – $125,000”
• Tech reporter: “$50,000- $145,000”
• Politics reporter: “$15/hour – $125,000”

New York Times

The Times is providing base pay salary ranges, including for jobs that can be done remotely. Examples:

• Senior designer: $76,500–$105,000
• Reporting fellowship: $76,168.04
• Legal affairs correspondent in Washington, D.C.: $115,506.56–$170,000.00
• Director, story and audience analytics: $152,000–$185,000.00
• Senior art director, games: $140,000–$165,000
• Supervising editor, style, Wirecutter, in New York, NY or remote: $92,650–$109,000

Penske Media Corporation

Examples:

• Associate director, paid social: $100,000–$110,000
• Vibe music editor: $75,000–$85,000
• Rolling Stone photo coordinator: $52,000–$62,000

Puck

New York City–based jobs did not include salary information as of Friday, Nov. 4 at 11:00 AM ET.

Reuters

Examples:

• Product manager – video: $122,500–$227,500
• Reader revenue analytics: $60,200–$111,800

Slate

Examples:

• News editor: “The annual base pay range for this job is between $82,000 and $100,000.”
• Podcast host – ICYMI: “The annual base pay range for this job is between $100,000 and $115,000.”

Substack

New York City–based jobs did not include salary information as of Friday, Nov. 4 at 11:00 AM ET.

Time

Examples:

• Manager of product design: $85,000–$125,000
• Newsletter operations manager: $75,000–$105,000

Vice

Examples:

• Editor, shopping and reviews: “New York/California: 64,000 – 75,000 USD. Outside New York/California: 54,000 – 64,000 USD”
• Associate writer, affiliate: “New York/California: 55,000 – 60,000 USD”
• VP, audio: “New York/California: 190,000 – 230,000 USD”

Vox Media

Vox is providing salary ranges for all positions, including for jobs that can be done remotely. Examples:

• NowThis director of analytics: “The minimum and maximum salary for this position is $125,000.”
• Cities manager, Eater (temporary while manager is on maternity leave): “The annual base pay range for this job is $77,000 to $108,000.”

Wall Street Journal

Examples:

• Executive producer, news podcasts: $50,000 to $180,000
• Audio reporter, The Journal podcast: $40,000 to $160,000
• Reporter, careers and workplace: $50,000 to $180,000

Washington Post

Examples:

• Sales sector director: $200,500–$334,100
• Graphic designer: $59,167.16–$125,600

WNYC

Examples:

• Major gifts officer: $82,000-$100,000.
• Housing reporter, WNYC/Gothamist: $84,413-$86,000.

The digital media stalwart opened itself to the stock market in late 2021, reposturing itself as the torchbearer for the rest of its startup peers. Vice, Vox, and Bustle all flirted with the idea of public investment to varying degrees over the years, but BuzzFeed was among the first to take the plunge, latching onto an SPAC deal, and selling shares of itself for $10 at the opening bell.

This was to be the new model for an industry that is constantly in search of financial salvation — yet another method to keep the creditors satiated — but in retrospect, the writing may have been on the wall from the very start. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti reportedly claimed that the company would rake in $520 million in revenue in 2021. At his first earnings call last month, that number was eroded down to $398 million. Today a BuzzFeed share sits at $5.18, about half its initial value.

You likely know the story by now. On the morning before that earnings call, BuzzFeed management unveiled a stark contraction of its Pulitzer-winning news department in an internal memo to employees. Three top BuzzFeed News editors were resigning, and about 35 employees are being offered voluntary buyouts. In total, BuzzFeed looks to shed 1.7% of its staff as the business seems to reorient around a single priority: Revenue.

“Under Jonah’s leadership, the company has subsidized BuzzFeed News for many years,” read one particularly cruel quote, per The Daily Beast (emphasis mine). “[The] next phase is for BuzzFeed News to accelerate the timeline to profitability and undergo a strategic shift so that we will get there by the end of 2023.”

When the dust cleared, it was increasingly evident how close BuzzFeed News might have come to a mortal blow. CNBC reported that major shareholders encouraged Peretti to clean out the news reporting staff entirely, as a way to juice maximum revenue through attrition — ostensibly returning BuzzFeed to the shoestring viral-content shop it was more than a decade ago. BuzzFeed News was formed in 2011 and offered the site an outsized dose of prestige journalistic credibility, steadily nudging the site’s reputation away from Harry Potter quizzes by, say, publishing the Steele dossier or uncovering the Kevin Spacey grooming allegations. The staff is only guilty of doing their jobs.

“Investors can’t force me to cut news, and the union can’t force me to subsidize news. I am committed to news in general and [BuzzFeed News] in particular. I’ve made the decision that I want News to be break-even and eventually profitable,” wrote Peretti, in an internal email sent to BuzzFeed staffers reviewed by Nieman Lab. “We won’t put profits ahead of quality journalism and I’ll never expect [BuzzFeed News] to be as profitable as our entertainment divisions. But we can’t keep losing money.”

That may be the most depressing part of the whole debacle: Many of us had wondered whether a massive infusion of shareholder money would be compatible with the prerogatives of a fleet of reporters disengaged from the cynical traffic economy. So far, it seems, we had the right to be worried.

“Jonah vowed up and down that this would not hurt us, that this would not be the thing that puts us in this place,” said a BuzzFeed News staffer who asked to remain anonymous for this story. “Maybe those promises were true for a few months, but then the shareholders said that they didn’t want to spend the money on news.”

BuzzFeed News employees will likely remain in a state of paranoia until the other shoe drops. Peretti may have warded off the vultures this time around with some leadership shakeups, overhead shrinkage, and promises to redouble profit maxims, but who knows what happens at the next earnings call? “[There’s] concern about how much pressure our CEO is willing to withstand before he caves and axes us completely, which is an insane way to operate in the first place,” said another BuzzFeed News employee. Peretti addressed those anxieties in the same internal email.

“My hope is that we don’t have to do this again, and that’s because of the change in approach that we started this week,” he wrote, in response to a question about whether the staff can expect more layoffs in the future. “For many years, News received more support than any other content division and over the years was allowed to spend 9-figures more than it generated in revenue. I still support News and value News, and I don’t want to have to cut back in News when we make new investments in other divisions. That’s why I want to transform News into a sustainable business, while continuing to do impactful, important journalism. I know this is a big shift and will require us to operate differently. We will set News up for success so News can become a stronger financial contributor to the overall BuzzFeed, Inc. business.”

If the last 20 years of layoffs, pivots, and foreclosures have taught us anything, it’s that running a sustainable, conscientious news organization without the presence of heavyweight shareholders is already exceedingly difficult. So, as the specter of the stock market looms, as more digital media shops barrel toward an SPAC or an IPO, as we witness just how quickly much of BuzzFeed News was sundered, those boardrooms need to start asking themselves some difficult questions. Do the desires of the Wall Street class align with the priorities of good news reporting? Do they even know what good news reporting is in the first place?

“I don’t know how to convince a person that news has inherent value, but that’s the truth of the matter. It’s a crucial good in the world that protects democracy, and people’s health and welfare,” said a BuzzFeed News employee. “It’s so valuable in ways that you’re not always going to see cash coming in from. But if you’re in this business, you have to decide that you want to be in this business. You have to commit to it.”

That’s the problem, of course. The megarich rarely invest in assets due to a conviction in their social cause. The goal, most of the time, is to grow and extract — even when the quickest way to growth is to slash a company’s overhead. Mark Stenberg, who covers the business of journalism for AdWeek, is not certain how many off-ramps are available for the ascendent digital media enterprises of the early 2010s. After all, the Bustles and Vices of the world all received massive infusions of seed funds from various well-heeled investors, and that bill comes due, eventually. Yes, enthusiasm for NASDAQ-listed newsrooms has tapered off since 2020 when it seemed as if those public listings were imminent, but Stenberg asked me to consider the mindset of the CEOs who spent years promoting their lucrative projections to a legion of wealthy partners and now find themselves running out of runway. From that perspective, a public offering appears compulsory.

“In some senses, ownership got investors based upon the premise that someday those investors will get that money back. From an organizational standpoint, it doesn’t seem like a decision. If they take the money, they have to go public,” said Stenberg. “But if you’re a reporter, and you’ve seen how negatively this has affected BuzzFeed, maybe that affects where you decide to go work.”

Stenberg is alluding to one contingency that could stem the tide. Media members everywhere are aware of the carnage wreaked by BuzzFeed’s SPAC, and the outrage will only become more fervent if Peretti and his investment team follow through on some of the more draconian cost-cutting options to grease flagging stock numbers. There’s a burgeoning disbelief among workers that a financial ambition built around exponential, unshackled growth will ever gel with the reasons people want to work in the media — a precept perhaps best embodied by Deadspin’s rebirth into Defector, an employee-owned co-op built around the idea that they’ll never be asked to sell themselves in order to make someone else rich. 

“I don’t think it’s inherently bad for a media company to want to scale and grow, nor do I think that is a business model that is incompatible with producing good journalism,” said Tom Ley, editor-in-chief of Defector. “The problem is in why such scale and growth is being pursued. If the idea is to make a big media company and earn a ton of money for the sake of employing lots of journalists and producing lots of good work, then scale away. But if the idea is to make a big media company and earn a ton of money just so that a few big investors can eventually hit the eject button and get out of there with a nice rate of return, that’s when you are going to run into an incompatible arrangement between the business itself and the people who want to do some good work for the business.”

Stenberg believes that the former philosophy might start to infect other, more profit-oriented companies that are trying to recruit new talent. A good retention tool is to promise that one’s position will not come to be regarded as disposable by a cabal of shadowy investors. At the end of the day, most journalists want to write stories without feeling as if they’re constantly being monitored for pecuniary efficiency. Should that be so hard to pledge?

“I wonder if companies might start saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have plans to go public, so you won’t ever feel like you’re under that pressure,’ It’s a far cry from the heyday of venture-backed media of a decade ago, where people were saying, ‘If we go public we can make all this money,'” said Stenberg. “I think this conversation is leading to a world where it’s rarer that going public is going to be a good idea for a news company. Growing every quarter is really difficult, especially for the news industry. And you see how that manifests at BuzzFeed when they say, ‘Lop off the unprofitable part.'”

For what it’s worth, BuzzFeed News employees have the benefit of a strong union that was forged before the company’s NASDAQ era. They’ve ratified a contract after more than two years of bargaining. That doesn’t guarantee them immunity from avaricious stockholders, at least not yet, but hey, leverage is leverage. If the slow creep toward stock-market finance in digital media is inevitable, at least the workers under the gun are finding their voice at the right time. Hopefully that message spreads across the industry.

“I absolutely think other unions should be talking about what going public would mean for them and the future of their newsrooms,” said a BuzzFeed News staffer. “So far, it doesn’t bode well for us.”

Samantha Henig, the company’s VP of news strategy and operations, will take over as interim editor-in-chief.

BuzzFeed News, with 100 employees, was losing about $10 million a year, two “people familiar with the matter” told CNBC. Those people also noted that “several large shareholders have urged BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti to shut down the entire news operation.”

same morning: Buzzfeed reports revenue is 31% lower than it promised to investors last year.
Buzzfeed told investors it would make $520m in 2021, and this would soar to $1.1bn in 2024.
actual 2021 revenue: $398m. https://t.co/QePtLjHN78

— Anna Nicolaou (@annaknicolaou) March 22, 2022

Looking ahead to the first 3 months of this year, $bzfd expects revenue to DROP and losses to top $20 million.

BUT, the company's stock-based awards will INCREASE by about $4.5 million.

Some employees have not been able to sell their stock: https://t.co/sdXA6M1bJH

— Edmund Lee (@edmundlee) March 22, 2022

From Schoofs’ resignation email:

Under [BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti]’s leadership, the company has subsidized BuzzFeed News for many years. The next phase is for BuzzFeed News is to accelerate the timeline to profitability and undergo a strategic shift so that we will get there by the end of 2023. That will require BuzzFeed News to once again shrink in size. […]

We hope to reduce our size through voluntary buy-outs, not layoffs, and we have reached out to the union to negotiate buyouts. Also: This is not your fault. You have done everything we asked, producing incandescent journalism that changed the world.

Schoofs hinted at what a smaller BuzzFeed News will — and won’t — focus on. The “won’t” appears to be longform investigative reporting, the kind for which BuzzFeed News won a Pulitzer last year. Instead, Schoofs wrote, the News division will focus on “the nexus between the internet and IRL.”

The new plan will emphasize one of our core strengths: providing fast, accessible, and authoritative coverage of the nexus between the internet and IRL. Pound for pound, BuzzFeed News is the best newsroom in America, and the people who stay will do terrific work.

We will be offering voluntary buyouts to anyone on Investigations, Politics, Inequality, or Science who has worked here for at least a year and who decides it’s time to move on.

Here’s Gawker writing about Peretti’s comments in this morning’s earnings call:

Peretti seemed bullish on other forms of “content development” — specifically on TikTok and in the metaverse. Though the company will cut the Complex editorial staff, Peretti said the network’s projects like ComplexCon and ComplexLand would accelerate their “ability to meet and increase demand for new connected experiences in the metaverse.” And though some 1.7 percent of the workforce will be taking buyouts this year, Peretti added that on TikTok and other platforms they planned to “double the size of their creator network.”

The news was a lot to take in for current and former employees and the rest of us looking on as seemingly bad news keeps rolling in.

Awful, awful news. It's clear the IPO was disastrous for journalism. Sending love and solidarity to everyone at Buzzfeed News, especially union members who've been fighting for a strong first contract for over two years. https://t.co/22oLfaf62K

— rebekah entralgo fernández (@rebekahentralgo) March 22, 2022

BuzzFeed News was what it was because of the people. The groundbreaking journalism was a byproduct of being around the bravest and most caring people in the business, and I'm sad that they are being whittled away. It feels like your childhood home is on fire.

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) March 22, 2022

Unconscionable decision to further decimate the newsroom. A newsroom that has won a Pulitzer, Mirror awards, broken life-changing stories, and most recently had reporters on the ground in Ukraine. Endless love to my former colleagues. No love to the people making these decisions. https://t.co/1SaDZmZ25F

— Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv) March 22, 2022

Dying digital media property shuffle:

Job cuts-lower traffic-bleeding ad revenue-more cuts-lower traffic-bleeding ad revenue-more cuts-rinse-repeat https://t.co/hEX80EwcpY

— ℮oin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) March 22, 2022

Don't have anything insightful to say beyond the fact that it makes me sad that BuzzFeed News can't seem to break out of this cycle of layoffs/buyouts, and can't help but wonder what would have happened if they hadn't taken on VC funding or had done a few things differently https://t.co/avinHxwYwx

— Anna Hensel (@ahhensel) March 22, 2022

I hate this. Just over a year after the BF cuts that shut down HuffPost Canada & Quebec (and reduced US staff), of course it's happening again. Expecting news to be profitable above all else is a loss for everybody. Solidarity with the BuzzFeed workers who are now out of a job. https://t.co/Ix5PGyy6yX

— Maija Kappler (@MaijaKappler) March 22, 2022

Similar symbolic boundaries between a product’s content and its form and mode of distribution have long existed in many cultural industries. In his study of labor in cultural fields, Bill Ryan notes that management of workers who produce creative content — such as composers, screenwriters, and journalists — was “remarkably benign,” because heavy-handed labor rationalization was seen as counterproductive for creative work. But this relative autonomy was strictly limited to the production of creative goods. By contrast, the reproduction and distribution of cultural commodities was thoroughly mechanized. Especially given this established historical precedent, the appeal of a boundary between content, on the one hand, and form/distribution, on the other, is clear: It allowed journalists to simultaneously feel that they were keeping up with technological change and reaping its benefits while also reassuring them that their professional judgment remained uncorrupted.

But choices about the form and distribution of news have never been neutral, nor are they irrelevant to discussions of how well the news media is fulfilling its role in democratic societies. Media scholars Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone have argued that design elements like page layout, typography, and story format have both expressed and shaped modes of civic participation throughout U.S. history. For example, newspaper front pages in the late twentieth century were less cluttered than their late nineteenth-century counterparts, with more white space and stories that were arranged in a clear hierarchy of prominence. This shift aligned with the norms of the modern era, which favored order and standardization, as well as journalists’ growing sense of themselves as an established profession with a responsibility to help their readers make sense of a chaotic world.

Yet if the form of news is inherently political, we don’t often think of it as such. Once a style of news presentation becomes standard across the industry, it is taken for granted in ways that render invisible the normative values and assumptions embedded therein. Similarly, processes of news distribution play a central — if overlooked — role in shaping how people congregate (or don’t), imagine their communities, engage in political participation, and exercise freedom of speech. In other words, the idea that news content can be neatly cleaved from news formats and modes of news distribution — and that the latter are neutral and normatively insignificant — has always been more a fantasy than a reality.

The untenability of the content versus form or distribution boundary has become even more apparent in the digital age. The algorithms that curate our personalized feeds on social media platforms, and which nearly all contemporary news outlets rely upon for distribution of their content, are now widely recognized as being inherently editorial and having enormous civic implications.

Online-only news organizations have also experimented with news form in controversial, even offensive, ways. To take one particularly high-profile example, after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military in July 2013, BuzzFeed published a piece titled “The story of Egypt’s revolution in ‘Jurassic Park’ GIFs.” True to its headline, the post consisted of a scant 404 words of text summarizing Egypt’s political upheaval, interspersed with GIFs from the classic Steven Spielberg film about an ill-fated dinosaur amusement park. Among them was a GIF of a hatching dinosaur egg to symbolize Egypt’s new constitution.

While undoubtedly optimized for clicks, the post might have been construed as an ill-conceived attempt to cover a complex subject in an attention-grabbing format that might attract readers who would be otherwise uninterested and uninformed about the situation unfolding in Egypt. Instead, the post, by Benny Johnson, a BuzzFeed writer who was eventually fired for plagiarizing Wikipedia, provoked widespread outrage in the industry. Slate editor L. V. Anderson called the post “the worst thing [BuzzFeed] has ever done,” while others pronounced it “the bottom of the barrel” and “a new low” in journalism. The general consensus was that the Egyptian conflict was too serious a subject to be covered in such a lighthearted, cheeky way. Slate’s Anderson argued that “BuzzFeed’s GIF-ification of Egypt’s civil conflict belittles the pain of people whose lives have been upended by violence.”

The backlash from other online news organizations against the BuzzFeed post illustrates, first, the infeasibility of a clear-cut normative distinction between news form and content in the age of social media distribution; second, the practical difficulty of drawing and maintaining consistent clean/dirty boundaries around uses of metrics; and, finally, how much those contested boundaries hinge on comparison with rival publications.

As U.S. journalism came into its own over the course of the 20th century, it gradually settled on foundational norms and rules that were supposed to guide ethical journalistic practice (for example, most journalists would agree that it’s wrong to plagiarize or accept large payments from sources). But there is not yet a widely agreed-upon normative standard within the profession for how to use metrics in an ethical way. My research revealed that journalists respond to this uncertain and stressful situation by devising symbolic boundaries that designate some uses of metrics as clean, such that they do not contaminate the newsroom or the journalists who work in it, and some as dirty. Creating and maintaining boundaries between clean and dirty metrics gave journalists a sense of control, however minor, over what might otherwise seem like a clear managerial imposition on their editorial decision-making.

We’ve been bargaining our contract for almost 2 years, but BuzzFeed won’t budge on critical issues like wages — all while preparing to go public and make executives even richer.

So TODAY, we’re walking out to send a reminder that there’s no BuzzFeed News without us. #BFNWalksOut pic.twitter.com/3xNDUVzwTh

— BuzzFeed News Union is walking out! (@bfnewsunion) December 2, 2021

The union’s main demands, after nearly two years of trying to negotiate a first contract with the company, is that BuzzFeed offer more than 1% guaranteed raises every year and offer more than a $50,000 salary base for employees, especially since BuzzFeed’s offices are located in expensive cities like New York and San Francisco.

The union is also pushing back on other aspects of what they say BuzzFeed management is trying to do, such as creative control of employees’ work outside their regular job and disciplinary action for metrics and traffic.

We also want language that ensures union members won’t be disciplined over traffic or revenue metrics. Management has pushed for squishy wording with carve-outs for some writers.

Pageviews are outside of an individual’s control and shouldn’t motivate our work. #BFNWalksOut pic.twitter.com/kQwqAVXPCr

— BuzzFeed News Union is walking out! (@bfnewsunion) December 2, 2021

How are the 60+ union employees (BuzzFeed as a whole has about 1,100 employees) who walked off the job being compensated for the time lost today? “We got an email from our deputy editor in chief this morning that was basically saying, you know, if you are walking off today, you will either need to take a PTO day or we’ll dock your pay, which is really frustrating for them to punish us for,” Addy Baird, who is a political reporter at BuzzFeed News and also a unit chair for the BuzzFeed News union, said during a Twitter Spaces event about the walkout.

“We are gonna win this, it’s just a matter of when,” Julia Reinstein, a reporter and member of the BuzzFeed News union’s bargaining committee, said to conclude the Twitter Spaces event.  “If they want to say that they’re going to dock our pay for a day or make us take PTO out? You know what fine they can do that. That is not going to stop us, and it’s hilarious if they think that it can.”

BuzzFeed News helped earn the publication its first Pulitzer Prize earlier this year, and is hoping to leverage that power to speed up negotiations with the company.

The walkout is only planned for the 24-hour period starting Thursday and ending Friday, and a BuzzFeed spokesperson told several outlets that a bargaining session is planned for next Tuesday. The deal to have the company go public, if voted up, is expected to close on Friday.

BuzzFeed, which now includes HuffPost, Tasty, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News plus smaller brands As/Is (beauty), Bring Me (travel), Goodful (health), Nifty (home), and Playfull (parenting), announced plans to go public through a SPAC merger on Thursday. The deal with 890 5th Avenue Partners Inc. — named after the headquarters of Marvel’s Avengers — will also bring pop culture and entertainment company Complex Networks under the BuzzFeed brand.

The company held an in-person (!) press conference and a slide deck for investors interested in $BZFD went around. Here’s a few things from the presentation that stood out.

Growth! A lot of it!

How do I put this? Some of the numbers seem…optimistic.

BuzzFeed plans to go public at an estimated valuation of $1.5 billion and predicts double-digit growth in multiple revenue buckets. The digital media company’s advertising revenue, for example, grew 13% in 2019 and 2020. But BuzzFeed management projects ad revenue to grow by 32% in 2021 and then at least 20% every year after that. (The industry-wide growth has been estimated around 7% for 2021.)

As CNBC’s Alex Sherman points out, BuzzFeed is serving as the digital media industry’s guinea pig here. A number of other outlets — Vice, Vox, Bustle, Group Nine, etc. — have made moves to go public via SPACs, too. Will investors agree that, as one slide puts it, “ad spend is shifting from mega platforms” like Google and Facebook? Those other media companies will be watching closely, as the reaction will affect their ability to follow in BuzzFeed’s footsteps.

BuzzFeed’s 2016 valuation, when it was supposed to be Big Media’s Facebook solution: $1.7 billion.
BuzzFeed 2021 valuation: $1.5 billion.

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) June 24, 2021

Almost no historical financials in the BuzzFeed investor deck, but if you go to the reconciliation slide on p38 you’ll find that BuzzFeed lost $29m in 2019 and made $4m in 2020. Which means the $1.5b valuation is 375X 2020 net income

— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) June 24, 2021

BuzzFeed is betting on e-commerce

Commerce revenue — think affiliate sales and the like — was up 62% over the year. (A lot of people were shopping from home during the pandemic.) BuzzFeed sees commerce as an opportunity for “further monetization of high-value audiences” via  “unique,” “inspiration driven” content.

The company forecasts that its commerce revenue will grow from $57 million (13% of overall revenue) in 2020 to $330 million by 2024 (31% of overall revenue.)

I think this says their plan is to grow Complex’s commerce revenue 6x in the next two years, there’d better be a lot more Adidas x Bad Bunny collabs in H1 2022. pic.twitter.com/YOGnWb2GOU

— choire sicha (@Choire) June 24, 2021

It sure sounds as if BuzzFeed wants to acquire more media companies

In a note to staff, CEO Jonah Peretti writes that “as a public company, we’ll have even more opportunity and public stock as a currency to help us pursue attractive acquisitions.”

He laid out what he’s looking for:

Our approach will be to support and magnify the independent editorial voice of any media brand that joins us. We don’t buy other media brands because we want them to look, feel, and sound like BuzzFeed. We buy them because they are additive, they enrich our team with talented new creators, they expand the audiences we serve, and provide new ways of communicating and connecting.

Never not pivoting to video

One slide claims that “86% of users would like to see more video content from brands.” BuzzFeed sees the growth of video as a “massive secular trend” and added that “video advertising contributes to traffic growth, increases average session time, attracts potential customers and increases sales.”

This is a smorgasbord of corporate speak. Who wants to play bingo with the Buzzfeed SPAC deck? pic.twitter.com/NzyfnC1BbX

— julia alexander (@loudmouthjulia) June 24, 2021

You can see the full deck presented to investors here.

Sara Yasin is the managing editor of BuzzFeed News.

[The New Humanitarian (no longer an acronymed UN agency) wants to move humanitarian crisis journalism beyond its wonky, depressing roots]

This was such a horrible week.

Condé Nast: 100 layoffs + 100 furloughs
BuzzFeed: ~ 20 furloughs
Quartz: 80 layoffs
Vice: 155 layoffs
The Economist: 90 layoffs

335 media jobs eliminated. 120 jobs tbd …

— Kerry Flynn (@kerrymflynn) May 15, 2020

You’ve heard about Quartz and the Vice, but there’s also voluntary buyouts at MPR (the first I’ve heard of from local public radio), the closure of a 30-year-old magazine in Indianapolis and a 41-year-old home and garden magazine in San Diego https://t.co/upOawhOO3F

— Kristen Hare (@kristenhare) May 15, 2020

Vice announced Friday that it’s laying off 55 employees in the U.S. today and about 100 more globally “over the coming weeks.” “The reality is that some tough decisions had to be made around our digital teams,” Vice CEO Nancy Dubuc wrote in a memo to staffers. “Currently, our digital organization accounts for around 50 percent of our headcount costs, but only brings in about 21 percent of our revenue.”

This is an unusually blunt explanation, and no longer treats digital as the fast-growing future — just another business line https://t.co/YiBjfX7uLO

— Ben Smith (@benyt) May 15, 2020

Vice union said they were pushing for a workshare program but management refused. Union also says management refused to make further cuts to exec compensation: https://t.co/pB6SgWWn6M

— Kerry Flynn (@kerrymflynn) May 15, 2020

Quartz — owned by Japanese media business company Uzabase — announced Thursday that it is laying off 80 employees, almost half its staff (it had 188 employees as of the end of 2019), and is closing its offices in London, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Washington, while also trying to find ways to reduce its rent in New York.

In a memo to staff, Quartz CEO Zach Seward said that while Quartz had 17,680 paying subscribers as of the end of April — not bad at all since it launched its paywall just a year ago — “advertising accounts for the bulk of our revenue, and that business has been hit very hard by the effects of coronavirus. Even after the pandemic recedes, the likely recession to follow could hurt ad revenue for years to come. Prior assumptions about our business no longer apply.” (Seward said he’s cutting his own salary by 50 percent for the rest of the year, “and the rest of our executive team — Katie Weber, Tomo Ota, and Katherine Bell — are voluntarily cutting their salaries by 20%, as well.”)

In the memo announcing roughly 80 layoffs, this was perhaps the most surreal line: “We have created a #goodbye channel in Slack for anyone to share farewells and contact information.” https://t.co/uOAfzU0Mzu

— Elana Zak (@elanazak) May 14, 2020

Gutted to see @qz lay off so many amazing journalists—@jkeefe, @jeremybmerrill, @hannakozlowska & more. Please hire them so I can continue following their incredible investigative, data & reporting work https://t.co/hUvquisiAU

— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) May 14, 2020

The Economist is laying off 90 employees (from a workforce of 1,300). None of those jobs were on the editorial side, according to Talking Biz News.

BuzzFeed announced another 20 positions would be put on furlough, though The Guardian reported that furloughed staff are “highly unlikely” to return.

The changes mean BuzzFeed UK office is dropping its coverage of UK news — though will continue to report on matters of “global interest” including, apparently, celebrity coverage — and the Australia office has been closed entirely.

1/Very sad Media news. Am told @BuzzFeedNews will no longer be covering local news in the UK or Australia. About 10 staff in UK furloughed; their future unclear. They were told on a conference call after 4pm. Celeb news, social news and investigations will however continue…

— Amol Rajan (@amolrajan) May 13, 2020

BuzzFeed News Australia has always been what the company allegedly wanted from a news department: a powerful (yet tiny!) machine that competes with orgs 10x it’s size in a monopolised market. To shut it is shameful, to give the reasoning it has is even moreso.

— brad esposito (@bradesposito) May 13, 2020

I wrote this this morning to spare everyone a lengthy tweet thread. I am so bloody proud of my colleagues. If my work has been useful to you please RT. I’ve worked full-time as a reporter for seven years and this is my website: https://t.co/uDZ2oRs779 pic.twitter.com/j1nMsxBPV7

— Gina Rushton (@ginarush) May 14, 2020

Condé Nast — the magazine publishing group once known as “the Vogue company” that also includes Wired, GQ, Architectural Digest, Teen Vogue, and its biggest earner, The New Yorker, among others — has laid off about 100 staffers and furloughed another 100.

The company is providing severance packages to laid off employees and will cover healthcare premiums for those who have been furloughed. At the start of 2020, Condé Nast had about 6,000 employees worldwide.

Solidarity with good people at Condé Nast. The economic shutdown is temporary, but the harm this thing is doing to journalism, and to individual journalists, feels very permanent. It’s maddening.

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) May 14, 2020

Update: EiCs were given a ratio of costs/revenue to guide cuts, and after budgets were axed, they cut headcount to meet that ratio. Seems like @NewYorker was the only title that didn't have to make editorial cuts. But still unclear.

— Edmund Lee (@edmundlee) May 13, 2020

At one point, an editor (and 2018 Nieman Fellow) said she wished she was in a position to hire her former Wired colleagues — but she’d been been laid off herself from Protocol in an earlier round of layoffs attributed to coronavirus.

Really wishing I was still the editorial director of an ambitious tech news team so I could hire @adavies47 and @parismartineau right now. Whoever is in a position to hire them should immediately. They are both aces and good people who write beautifully and care about journalism.

— Emily Dreyfuss (@EmilyDreyfuss) May 13, 2020

Although AM to DM has run advertising, Twitter’s decision to pull funding was decisive for BuzzFeed, which is suspending production, according to a memo first reported by CNN’s Oliver Darcy.

BuzzFeed’s head of studios Cindy Vanegas-Gesuale told staffers that BuzzFeed could not support the show “without the investment from Twitter.”

BuzzFeed’s @AM2DM is suspending production: “After several high-level conversations, Twitter informed us that due to the impact of coronavirus on the business, they can no longer fund AM to DM…” https://t.co/g7cj4O1REX pic.twitter.com/hLgni48Mtm

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 16, 2020

The last day for employees working on AM to DM and the other Twitter-funded project will be April 28. Darcy was told eight employees would be affected.

“I am truly sad and sorry about this turn of events,” Vanegas-Gesuale wrote in the memo. “We will be working overtime to revive our partnership with Twitter, and we hope with as much of the current team as possible.”

Twitter, which reported its own problems with ad revenue, told CNN they will “continue to partner with BuzzFeed on the other content collaborations” they have around the world.

When AM to DM launched in fall 2017, it was an anchor for what was then a big Twitter push into live video. BuzzFeed reported the show — originally titled “MorningFeed” — was averaging 1 million unique views each day. The show, which featured Twitter content alongside interviews by original hosts (and IRL friends) Saeed Jones and Isaac Fitzgerald, targeted a millennial audience — and found one, with a reported 78 percent of daily live viewers under 35. By January 2019, though, it was reaching a much smaller audience, around 400,000 people per episode. The show’s Twitter account has only 27,800 followers, suggesting a smaller core audience.

In mid-2019, Jones and Fitzgerald left to pursue writing projects and Alex Berg (previously a supervising producer for the show) and Zach Stafford took over as co-hosts.

A *new* thread of my fave interviews and stories in 2020.

Kicked off the new year on @am2dm by talking to Faith Rodgers, one of R.Kelly’s accusers, who discussed the ramifications she’s faced for telling her story in #SurvivingRKelly. She is so brave.https://t.co/pOkvdXx21H

— Alex Berg (@itsalexberg) January 7, 2020

The BuzzFeed News Union posted a statement on Twitter that claimed the company classified the writers, hosts, and producers who worked on AM to DM as freelance contractors, leaving them without the benefits and job security provided to their colleagues. “A constantly shifting landscape of partnership deals is not a justification for classifying long-term full-time employees as temporary contractors,” the statement reads. “It’s not a justification for keeping people in the dark about the status of the projects they work on.”

Our statement on BuzzFeed suspending production of @AM2DM pic.twitter.com/GRUwGwXvJl

— BuzzFeed News Union (@bfnewsunion) April 16, 2020

Jones said the staff on AM to DM “deserved so much better.”

The producers, assistants and crew who made @AM2DM deserved so much better than being laid off as “freelancers” without severance or benefits in the middle of a pandemic — the same “freelancers” who took paycuts a few weeks ago to support their colleagues. Bravo, @peretti. https://t.co/0nlZnkl1dH

— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) April 16, 2020

if they walk like your full-time employees and work like your full-time employees, they're probably your full-time employees — and offloading responsibility for laying them off during a pandemic doesn't cut it. @AM2DM staff & everyone who works on buzzfeed's shows deserve better. https://t.co/L27ASSeCci

— Rachel Sanders (@rachelysanders) April 16, 2020

Hiring young, camera-ready content creators for social media is hardly surprising for BuzzFeed. But these teen ambassadors will work with the election team at BuzzFeed News, the newsroom side of the operation that has taken pains to distinguish itself from quizzes and cat videos in recent years with a separate site, masthead, and mission statement.

Sara Yasin, BuzzFeed News’ director of news curation, said three teen ambassadors — aged 16 to 19 — will be chosen to make weekly videos for TikTok or Instagram stories based on their passion for political issues and creative storytelling abilities. (No YouTube: Yasin said making a quality YouTube video would be overly time-consuming for the teenagers, who’ll likely be enrolled in high school or their freshman year of college.)

From the job description:

This is a chance to use our huge audience to create meaningful conversations about US politics. The ideal candidate should be creative, passionate about the upcoming election, and eager to show what 2020 means for them and their peers. Ambassadors will collaborate with BuzzFeed News editors to hone their news judgement and learn best practices for engaging and growing a social audience.

While having a following already is not a must, we are looking for candidates who already have some experience making creative content or an eye for what works.

Yasin said she saw the new positions as just one example of the goals and methods of BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News aligning. “I associate BuzzFeed with a lot of innovation,” she said. “With [the teen ambassadors], we’re thinking about the way news is going to look in the future and playing around with that vision.”

The ambassadors will work remotely from swing states or “other places that might be overlooked in the nationwide political conversation” — though BuzzFeed News will bring them to New York for training and mentoring at the beginning of their tour of duty. A BuzzFeed News spokesperson said they will also be paid a “competitive” monthly stipend from March until the election but declined to specify a dollar amount.

Hi!!! I can FINALLY tell you all about a project I’m very excited about. We are bringing on teens to tell stories about the 2020 election https://t.co/IUqbFxApNi

— Sara Yasin (@sarayasin) January 28, 2020

The openings come at a time of transition for BuzzFeed. The company expects to turn a profit for the first time in 2020, having diversified its revenue past native advertising and into e-commerce, content licensing, and other lines. But its unprofitable news operation is facing uncertainty after its founding editor Ben Smith announced he was leaving for The New York Times last week.

BuzzFeed is well-established on Instagram, with its main feed boasting 5.2 million followers and BuzzFeed News another 1.3 million. But not so much on the TikTok: The main BuzzFeed account has 46,700 followers and the BuzzFeed News account, which remains unverified, hovers around 700.

Yasin said BuzzFeed News hasn’t focused on growing its TikTok account just yet, echoing other news outlets, including NBC, The Washington Post, and The Dallas Morning News, who say they’re still experimenting on the site. (You can find a listing of 50-plus news outlets’ TikTok accounts here.)

Right now, outlets appear focused on making light-hearted TikTok videos, many depicting newsroom antics or repurposed viral videos. (When Christine Schmidt poked around the platform in June, the “lone recognizable outlet” she found sharing news stories was NBC News’ Stay Tuned.) Journalists also tend to poke fun at their own outsider-on-the-platform status, self-consciously including tags like #dadjoke and #fellowkids — a nod to the fact that 60 percent of the TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24.

But with the teen ambassadors, BuzzFeed News is proposing something different — videos for Gen Z platforms by Gen Z users. “I feel it’s really important to pass the mic to them,” Yasin said.

Even if the ambassadors are likely ineligible to vote, Yasin says they’re part of a generation that has been energized by the political moment and wants to create “meaningful conversations” on platforms that feel natural to them. She added the BuzzFeed News politics team is excited about involving the ambassadors in their 2020 coverage.

TEENS! WE NEED YOU! https://t.co/vhTqsPXgIu

— Dennis Huynh (@dennishuynh) January 28, 2020

“The things they’ll be crafting will be held to a journalistic standard,” Yasin said. “But they don’t necessarily have to be someone who is aspiring to be a journalist.” She cited the teens creating micro history lessons on TikTok as one example of the creativity she hopes to see from applicants.

@historyhouse

Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who exposed the conditions of immigrants, but more people were disgusted at the meat #historymemes #historyhouse #fyp

♬ original sound –

Pew surveyed 12,043 U.S. adults about their trust of 30 news sources in November and December 2019. It found that, for political and election news, “greater portions of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic express trust than distrust in 22 of 30 news sources asked about. More Republicans and Republican leaners distrust than trust 20 of the 30 sources.”

Republican distrust in news has also risen over time. When Pew conducted a similar study in 2014, Republicans still distrusted the majority of sources asked about — but over the past five years there’s been “notable growth in Republicans’ distrust of CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times,” which also tend to be Trump’s favorite news sources to bash. Democrats’ trust levels have shifted significantly less since 2014.

It’s worth noting, though, that not trusting a news source is not the same as not watching or reading it. A previous Pew study found that 14 percent of Americans say they get news from a source they distrust; among conservatives, that number is 26 percent. Scholars have their theories why. In this study, of the 24 percent of Republicans who said they’d gotten news from CNN in the past week, 39 percent nonetheless said they don’t trust it.

Here’s one thing that continues to stick out since 2014: members of both parties’ extreme distrust of BuzzFeed, one of only three outlets “distrusted by more in each party than trusted.” (The other two: the New York Post and the right-wing Washington Examiner.) BuzzFeed was a Pulitzer finalist in 2017 and 2018, is a member of the White House Press Corps, and has broken lots of nationally significant stories — but this data suggests it still hasn’t shaken its lolcats image among a broader group of Americans.

BuzzFeed was even the only news source that isn’t explicitly conservative that more Democrats distrusted than trusted. One potential factor: Pew’s survey asked for opinions about “BuzzFeed,” not “BuzzFeed News,” the slightly distinct brand the company has emphasized the past few years.

There’s often a question about the interplay of partisanship and ideology in news trust, and Pew’s data shows the combination amplifies the effect. Conservative Republicans trust media less than moderate Republicans, and liberal Democrats trust media more than moderate Democrats.

Pew found there were 11 news sources trusted by at least 40 percent of liberal Democrats: CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, PBS, The New York Times, the BBC, MSNBC, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time.

Meanwhile, there were only 2 news sources trusted by at least 40 percent of conservative Republicans: Fox News and Sean Hannity’s radio show. (Rush Limbaugh was next at 38 percent.)

The full report is here. It’s part of a separate initiative that Pew is launching on Friday, the Election News Pathways project, which will look at “how Americans’ news habits and attitudes relate to what they hear, perceive and know about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

In the early days of BuzzFeed, our traffic would die in the evening because people would watch television or go out with their friends. Now, with mobile, we see prime time for our content as the same as prime time for television. People are sharing content and looking at content later.

there are so many fascinating nuggets in this interview with BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti and his reflections on the last decade, not least this – " When BuzzFeed started, the iPhone didn’t exist. Our peak traffic time was during the middle of the day" https://t.co/N2loZrHHfh

— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) November 26, 2019

(In 2010, Peretti famously called his target audience for making something viral the Bored-At-Work Network.)

On the dress post of 2015 (which got 28 million views in a single day):

I think that scared Facebook a little bit, that there could be a publisher that promotes a piece of content that then their algorithm feels like it needs to show to everyone in the world. Today, there’s a fear of viral content — you see this in China to an even greater extent. The Chinese government is very afraid of things that go viral, because it’s something that they can’t control. And I think even in the U.S. now, there’s more of a moment of trying to control the internet. Ironically, that has led to much more microtargeting, where instead of having one thing that everyone in the world sees, we have personalized content for each individual, and keep people more in their lanes and in their bubbles, and not have as much entertainment that cuts across the entire social network or the entire web. In the long run, I think that’s led to things like more separatist movements around the world, more polarization.

On BuzzFeed’s own experience with microtargeted content, like “You know you’re from Princeton, New Jersey when…”

[When] you look at a post like “Signs You’re Raised by Asian Immigrant Parents,” we could see that half of the people reading it weren’t Asian. I think what ended up happening is that, over time, people realized you could do the same thing but have it be about a negative view of other people. Like, “This is who we are, and everyone else is threatening us.” Or, “You should be fearful of us.”

Another fun find: @peretti shouts outs @daozers's first viral hit "27 Signs You Were Raised By Asian Immigrant Parents"https://t.co/RbhLaPj0V4https://t.co/5YiaIW3myM pic.twitter.com/2apXK4oebo

— Christina DiRusso (@CDiRusso) November 26, 2019

One small observation on that @max_read interview with Jonah on BuzzFeed and ~media~

Why did NYMag choose to hook this interview with a 2013 of Jonah and Dao (with Dao as the "adult") but not include Dao in the interview (or even mention her)? https://t.co/8xSRnMv77i

— Noah Chestnut (@noahchestnut) November 26, 2019

On how journalism has changed over the decade:

I think a lot of the biggest stories are now being driven by the online reaction. I don’t think the Me Too movement is just a heroic act of journalism; it’s that every time there’s a story, the online distribution of that story results in new victims and new sources emerging, and then it creates a new urgency for the subjects of the story who are no longer able to keep their jobs or to avoid scrutiny.

great @max_read interview with @peretti but this bit made me scream on the train https://t.co/o4yfELj01w pic.twitter.com/2OPnv1tNVg

— David Mack (@davidmackau) November 26, 2019

On the pivot to video:

We knew Facebook wanted to do video; they said they wanted to do more video. And we also knew that Facebook’s users didn’t like video. We’d say, “Oh, we have all these great videos. We can put them on Facebook, too.” We put them on Facebook, and the audience hated it — and they hated it because they were using Facebook for, you know, two-minute check-ins when they had a little break in their day to see what was going on in the world and with their friends. Text is a better thing, more scannable….

The companies that have stayed away from video have done better than the companies that have kind of half-assed it and tried to do video and then realized that, “Oh, this is expensive.” The problem is that the cost was something people didn’t think about. They just thought about the CPMs and the advertising. They’re like, “Oh, I get a $10 CPM on my text content, but they’ll pay $30 for a video. That means I should pivot to video, and video will be great.” And then you get into it, and you start saying, “Oh, wait a second, how much does it cost to make the video?”

The latest vows column is a whopper. https://t.co/8TpFYff0J8

— Laura June (@laura_june) September 25, 2019

The photo made me think they got married? Which I guess they kinda did? It’s super Vows-looking. Congratulations. https://t.co/GaUMezD3XE

— Lisa Tozzi (@lisatozzi) September 25, 2019

Congratulations to @Vox and @NYMag on their wedding, tastefully chronicled in the NYT Vows section oh wait https://t.co/HrwRIniqPe

— Christine Emba (@ChristineEmba) September 25, 2019

Looks like a photo for a Vows column. https://t.co/ehuoupcjdh

— katie rosman (@katierosman) September 25, 2019

(That reaction is a not-so-subtle reminder of how unusual it still is to see a 41-year-old woman leading the sort of high-profile company whose acquisition would be deemed worth a business-section story.)

Vox Media is, of course, one of the largest and most successful digital-native publishers, the autocomplete that pops up if you type “buzzfeed vice” anywhere on the Internet. Built out of sports site SB Nation and later expanded to include The Verge, Vox, Eater, and more, Vox Media has historically thought of itself as the Condé Nast of the Internet: a collection of premium, subject-specific media brands that can do high-gloss editorial and attract high-end audiences, but with the technology and product chops that come from growing up online. It’s the most print-like of the big digitals; you can see the DNA of magazine layout in some of its designs, and its mix of both editorial big swings and webbier front-of-book content brings along some print editorial values.

New York is, of course, the storied magazine that grew out of the late New York Herald Tribune under the guidance of editorial legend Clay Felker. It’s a city magazine in name and attitude. But like its peers at The New Yorker and The New York Times — it both reflects New York and uses it as a jumping-off point for writing smartly about anything and everything. And like the Times and New Yorker, that has given it the ability to adapt its identity to the Internet in ways most local print outlets can’t. Under the editorial leadership of Adam Moss, it launched a series of digital editorial brands with no explicit connection to New York but which took advantage of the magazine’s strengths — most notably the culture site Vulture and the fashion/style site The Cut, which for my money is the smartest “women’s” site online. (Its readers’ median household income? $186,797.) As long ago as 2010, David Carr could describe New York as “fast becoming a digital enterprise with a magazine attached.” It’s probably the webbiest of the major print-born media companies.

So the most print-like digital publisher is joining up with the most digital of print publishers. While this is being framed as an acquisition (with no dollar amounts released), it’s not hard to see why it might look like…a happy marriage. Substantial audience overlap, similar editorial values, strong reputations for quality — these crazy kids might pull it off!

You can see how the two sides are framing the meet-cute here (with a photo that even meets the Vows rule about even eye levels):

We have long admired (and often envied) each other’s businesses, which revealed themselves to be uniquely complementary as we quickly moved from exploratory conversations, through diligence, to an agreement. Sharing values, we found our capabilities — each excelling in different areas, with little overlap — naturally and seamlessly fitting together. New York Media is an exemplar of groundbreaking journalism, with a smart, trenchant voice, that has turned a 51-year-old print magazine into an inventive multiplatform company that punches well above its weight. Vox Media’s authority, spirit of innovation, and foundation in technology and communities, together with its visionary approach to expansion, diversification, and growth, have set it apart from other media companies that have risen in the past decade.

Let’s take a look at this pairing — what works and what might not.

Distinct paywall models. Just like everyone else, both companies are chasing direct revenue from readers, but they’ve had different approaches. Vox Media has been relatively cautious, experimenting with things like the Vox Video Lab. Bankoff said this spring there would be some further membership/paywall moves “later this year.”

Meanwhile, New York went all-in on a metered paywall late last year, at $5 a month. Interestingly, it’s a subscription that cuts across all of New York’s verticals — even though there are dedicated Vulture readers who have no interest in The Cut, Grub Street partisans with no time for Intelligencer, and so on.

I enjoy a lot of New York content, but I confess I haven’t ponied up those five bucks. As I wrote last year, it’s harder for magazine and magazine-like digital properties to make a subscription pitch, given that they are often a news consumer’s second read after the Times, the Post, or some other more full-service publisher. But a subscription that includes not only those New York sites…but also Vox, The Verge, SB Nation, et cetera? That’s a stronger pitch, even if it means divvying up the money among more sites. (Wasserstein said today that one of the areas of “new potential” she’s most interested in is “subscription businesses across this entire portfolio.”)

Think for a minute of the nascent streaming wars — Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu being joined by Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, HBO Max, ad infinitum. Knowing that consumers are unlikely to pay for lots of individual channels piecemeal, each company is trying to recreate the old cable bundle in its own way. (Are Marvel movies not enough to get you to sign up for Disney+? Well then, how about Toy Story? Or The Simpsons? National Geographic? Frozen? Yoda? Do you like Yoda? You seem like someone who’d like Yoda. What if we threw in ESPN+ and Hulu too?) They know that, given the sea of free content available and the incumbents’ advantage, it’ll take a diverse catalog of content to get people to pony up for access to the whole package.

When the digital publishing business was mostly about advertising, the purpose of moar scale was primarily about cutting backend costs and being able to do deals with a higher grade of advertiser. But as it shifts more toward subscription, moar scale is also about assembling a big-enough and diverse-enough bundle of content to appeal to a bigger audience. Sites have gotten pretty good at getting their superfans to buy a digital subscription. But there aren’t enough superfans. Yes, there are people who loooooooove The Cut. But there are probably more who only like The Cut — and also like Vox and The Verge and Vulture.

That’s an opportunity mergers like this can provide. This is a critical distinction from the print-era Condé Nast, where a Vogue subscriber had no reason to care that the same company published Golf Digest and GQ. Magazine-style content, but newspaper-style bundle.

(Side note: Vox Media and New York were two of only a handful of digital publishers who agreed to be part of the premium Apple News Plus bundle, in which they get some infinitesimal cut of Apple’s subscription revenue. Better to build the bundle than to be bundled by someone else.)

I like this deal. I like both companies involved and how they fit together. I like that there’s a legitimate growth story to be told, not just a cut-until-you-hit-profit one — which is the narrative most American newspapers are facing, unfortunately.

I’m sure roadblocks will pop up along the way, at all levels of the new operation. But I think these two have a real shot at making it work — maybe even growing old together. And the kids will probably be cute.

From Kafka’s piece:

Amazon already pays internet publishers that refer shoppers to the company via “affiliate links” embedded on their site, but it thinks that business could grow significantly if US publishers had more readers outside of America.

Right now, publishers are paid when a shopper clicks on a link on their site, heads to Amazon, and eventually buys something. But sources say Amazon has been proposing various deals that would give publishers money up front in order to expand their international sites or open up new markets.

This would seem to be a relatively rare instance of the goals of a platform actually aligning with the goals of a publisher. The New York Times, which acquired The Wirecutter for a reported $30 million in 2016, is gaining international subscribers faster than U.S. subscribers, and Australia, Canada, and the UK are its largest international markets; it could conceivably create buying guides for those markets without the additional complication of a language barrier.

And while BuzzFeed has retrenched internationally, some kind of deal with Amazon might, just possibly, keep some international staff employed a little longer (though it wouldn’t necessarily rebuild the investigative forces that BuzzFeed has lost abroad). New York Magazine, with its Strategist, seems like a bit of a different case — it is after all called New York — but it too is reaching for a broader international audience. Last year, when it launched its $5/month membership program, the press release cited “a global audience of 45 million readers per month,” and then-EIC Adam Moss noted, “New York has expanded far beyond its namesake city, both in its scope of coverage and audience.”

That said, this is sure to raise ethical questions, as affiliate relationships often do for publishers. The main tension lies most typically between the editorial independence of reviewers — whose objective skill in evaluation is, after all, the value they’re adding — and the business side, which knows both that (a) positive reviews generate more sales (and thus more affiliate revenue) than negative ones, and that (b) some retailers give publishers a larger cut than others, potentially skewing the recommendations readers get.

Publishers have made pains to show they’re operating above board, with statements like this one from Wirecutter:

Our writers and editors are never made aware of which companies may have established affiliate relationships with our business team prior to making their picks. If readers choose to buy the products we recommend as a result of our research, analysis, interviews, and testing, our work is often (but not always) supported through an affiliate commission from the retailer when they make a purchase. If readers return their purchases because they’re dissatisfied or the recommendation is bad, we make nothing. There’s no incentive for us to pick inferior products or respond to pressure from manufacturers — in fact, it’s quite the opposite. We think that’s a pretty fair system that keeps us committed to serving our readers first.

Or this from New York’s The Strategist:

Our guiding principles are to be trustworthy and persuasive about what is worth spending your money on. If you purchase something through our links, we often earn an affiliate commission, but we never recommend anything we don’t fully stand behind.

Does that ethical equation change if a specific company — say, the largest online retailer in the world, 2.5× bigger than its closest global rival and 4.5× bigger than its closest American one — is funding the content upfront? It’s hard to say that the writers of a (let’s say) Wirecutter India won’t be “aware” of which company’s money pay their salaries. And a recommendation site typically features two different layers of editorial judgment: which products to recommend and which online retailers to link readers to in order to buy them. Would Amazon be okay with the reviewers it provided startup funding for linking to Jet if it has the cheapest price on the best waffle iron?

It also feels worth noting that Amazon’s search experience — when you are looking for a broad category of item rather than a specific one you already know the name of — seems to have gotten noticeably worse in recent months; it is, in a word, “sketchier” than it used to be. It is ridden with sponsored links and other ads, the core of what has become an $11 billion business for Amazon; unknown brands dominate; fake reviews are rampant.

(Want an example of what I’m talking about? Search Amazon for “steamer,” as I did recently. It is impossible from that page to tell what you should buy. I ended up going over to Wirecutter, and its recommendation didn’t even appear on Amazon’s first page of search results.)

This seems like something Amazon could fix on its end, but that would require it to give up on that sweet sponsored product revenue. So maybe it’s outsourcing the “reliable” recommendations to publishers instead.

A few noteworthy parts of the memo:

BuzzFeed is making much more money from platforms than it used to, and it’s embracing them.

A year ago, in Q1 of 2018 we made about $500K in video platform revenue from Facebook; in Q4 of 2018 we made $3M. In January of 2017, we monetized less than 30% of views on YouTube; by November, we monetized more than 70%. Overall, revenue we generate from the biggest platforms — Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix — has grown by 12 times since 2014.

These stats are in a section of the memo titled “Fix the platforms and get paid to do it.” Peretti argues that publishers are “fixing” the platforms by “[filling] the void…with quality content,” with the “void” referring to “opportunistic bad actors — anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, conspiracy theorists, misogynists, racists, xenophobes, trolls, partisan extremists, scammers, and pedophiles.” (Related: Michael Golebiewski and danah boyd’s idea of “data voids.”) The argument is that by putting their own content on the platforms — and monetizing it — publishers will push the bad stuff out, and Peretti’s view of publisher relationships with the platforms is a rosy one:

Digital media companies scaling down or turning away from the platforms is the exact opposite of what the platforms need. It is much harder to moderate bad content than it is to create good content. No matter how much money the platforms spend, or how many content moderators they hire, this problem won’t be solved by removing bad content, we need an ecosystem where creating good content is sustainable. If tech and media work together, everyone will benefit.

This changes, of course, if the platforms turn away from you. It’s not clear what happens to content from publishers like BuzzFeed if, say, Facebook actually shifts its focus to private conversations between individuals.

Platforms are a piece but not the whole.

Peretti writes that “we still aren’t making enough from the platforms to sustain our investment in content,” and says that “in 2018 and 2019, we will generate over $200m in revenue from business lines that didn’t even exist in 2017.” He points to Tasty, which is “the biggest media brand on Facebook, but almost all of its revenue comes from businesses we’ve needed to create on our own.”

No “cheap TV.”

“We don’t make shitty TV, we make good internet,” Peretti writes. “We lean into the unique, digital power of that two-way connection, we create new ways for our audience to experience BuzzFeed.” Video content built for Netflix or Facebook Watch is “complementary,” he says, but “some digital media companies have pivoted to cheap TV or think of television as a more important medium. That isn’t true when you look at what drives culture today and in the future.” (Netflix said no to a second season of BuzzFeed’s series Follow This in January.)

The full memo — which includes the prediction that in a few years, the internet dumpster fire-ness of 2016-2019 will be a distant memory; fingers crossed — is here. And if you don’t want to read it, you can get the gist by reading tweets from his SXSW talk, just concluded. Kerry Flynn tweeted the whole thing if you want a straight narrative; a selection is below.

Strong start by @BuzzFeed CEO @peretti about the recent shitty state of the internet. #SXSW19 #buzzfeed #contentmarketing pic.twitter.com/jfDSLPKYVd

— Matt Holmes (@matt_holmes) March 8, 2019

.@peretti says that things are getting better. Platforms are valuing content. Business models are evolving and sustainable. Content connects with people. #sxsw #sxtxstate

— Jordon Brown @ SXSW March 8-17 (@THEJordonBrown) March 8, 2019

Want to make shareable content? @peretti – consider the job your content will perform. #SXSW @BuzzFeed pic.twitter.com/y0wy4gUUBI

— Nicole Chalmers (@NChalmers) March 8, 2019

"I know it’s popular to quit social media or say the internet is terrible, but we can’t give up. We have to keep fighting to make a great internet. There’s a lot of amazing things happening and it’s important that we, the industry, has the optimism." – @peretti #SXSW

— Kerry Flynn @ #SXSW (@kerrymflynn) March 8, 2019

Beyond AM2DM, which you can read more about here https://t.co/sUJqw25RoF, another internet content success for BuzzFeed @peretti highlights is their Instagram account for Cuppy (the cupcake) #SXSW pic.twitter.com/YgBLYuM7Cs

— Kerry Flynn @ #SXSW (@kerrymflynn) March 8, 2019

How BuzzFeed measures the value of their own content — BUC v BAM aka category v attention #SXSW pic.twitter.com/2aSiEmEOWu

— Kerry Flynn @ #SXSW (@kerrymflynn) March 8, 2019

.@peretti solution: “The people at the platforms are good people. They have families. They’re not anti-vaxxers themselves. They’re spending billions of dollars trying to moderate the content but the better solution is to create better models for the good content to thrive.” #SXSW

— Kerry Flynn @ #SXSW (@kerrymflynn) March 8, 2019

.@peretti also said that that digital media can help spark conversation online such as what does the “h” mean in “IMHO,” which started in a @BuzzFeed slack. “Honest” won in the room. #SXSW pic.twitter.com/pV9l39E2mS

— Frank Pallotta (@frankpallotta) March 8, 2019

Fixing the internet? @peretti talks about digital platforms working with content makers to provide ‘brand-safe’ content #SXSW2019 pic.twitter.com/3dIqEm0T1H

— Chris De Abreu (@chrisdeabreu) March 8, 2019

.@peretti says people are more interested in feedback and response than payment in this section. #sxsw #sxtxstate

— Jordon Brown @ SXSW March 8-17 (@THEJordonBrown) March 8, 2019

In his answer to this question on viral content versus reporting, @peretti says “SPARKS JOY” like five times #SXSW pic.twitter.com/H7p7hEgqhk

— Kerry Flynn @ #SXSW (@kerrymflynn) March 8, 2019

“The thing that is really starting to define media today is real world experience… Get off your phone and do things in the real world.” –@peretti @buzzfeed I’m excited to see the theme of encouraging activity & community IRL take hold across all sectors of tech! #SXSW2019 pic.twitter.com/eI1gGshoI1

— Kelsey Ditto (@KelseyDitto) March 8, 2019

.@peretti ‘s talk at #SXSW leaves me worried about the future of digital journalism. In 30 minutes he has just talked around 3 minutes about @BuzzFeed’s journalism. The rest was all animated cupcakes, kitchenware and influencers pic.twitter.com/b9NLPFUdw4

— Ellen Schuster (@ellen_sch) March 8, 2019

Jonah Peretti’s final message… @peretti CEO of @BuzzFeed #SXSW19 pic.twitter.com/xZLZ3cGl2N

— MedienNetzwerkBayern (@MediennetzwerkB) March 8, 2019

"We printed out the internet." @BuzzFeedBen reports live from Union Square where he's handing out copies of BuzzFeed's first newspaper pic.twitter.com/Q8W9R7o9vX

— AM2DM by BuzzFeed News (@AM2DM) March 6, 2019

If you're around Union Square in NYC, you can grab a copy of the @buzzfeed newspaper we designed! Amazing illustrations from @kelseyrushing, @ebencom, & @Benkothe, and photos by @bubaczery: pic.twitter.com/JRbCF2gO7N

— BuzzFeed News Art Dept (@BuzzFeedNewsArt) March 6, 2019

It includes a GIF in print form:

Confident @BuzzFeed is the first outlet to print a gif in a newspaper, we are rocket scientists pic.twitter.com/CqW5CYydMc

— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) March 6, 2019

BuzzFeed made a newspaper and I’m back in print pic.twitter.com/PNsAe1cdOX

— Lauren Strapagiel (@laurenstrapa) March 6, 2019

This @BuzzFeed newspaper thing is hilarious.

1. The NYC local knowledge page is so spot on. I wish someone had handed me that when I first moved to this city.

2. The self-deprecation note fits nicely with the Momo content. pic.twitter.com/69jT38oNxk

— Sue Márquez (@SueMarquezR) March 6, 2019

Just look at all those New Yorkers ignoring that paper!

Get your BuzzFeed newspaper in NYC today for all the best of the internet without the internet! pic.twitter.com/xklQOjTLJB

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) March 6, 2019

Papers will be available between 5:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

someone handed me a buzzfeed newspaper in union square this morning and it turns out we CAN make momo fashion pic.twitter.com/COfXz09yCT

— emma lord (@dilemmalord) March 6, 2019

I hope they are properly dressed. pic.twitter.com/gQ8anpwo6X

— The Bowery Boys Podcast (@BoweryBoys) March 6, 2019

Can one of my NYC friends pretty please help us out and grab a copy of the @buzzfeed newspaper for us? I will owe you my eternal love and gratitude — and the alcoholic and/or caffeinated beverage of your choosing. https://t.co/umUxYqBfr7

— Jen Peters (@EditrixJen) March 6, 2019

So far the BuzzFeed newspaper seems to be a big hit among the "employees at other digital media companies" demographic

— Bob Al-Greene (@BobAlGreene) March 6, 2019

Twitter is not without crankiness: BuzzFeed lays all those people off and then goes and prints a newspaper like money? The company says this is a one-time stunt, for fun. It is designed to get BuzzFeed attention, and with this post, we are obliging.

So go the fortunes of four of the six largest U.S. daily newspaper companies. The journalists’ Twitter is alight with Game of Thrones metaphors, but I think that’s misplaced. The action seems more Bravo-esque, The Desperate Housewives of Main Street, perhaps. Or, more prosaically, as one newspaper company exec told me Wednesday, “The pressure for consolidating is only intensifying.”

Those aren’t the only digital media soaps in action. Consider the draconian, get-ahead-of-the-recession first-of-the-year layoffs at both BuzzFeed and Verizon, and Friday at Vice. Take that as one end-of-the-decade sign that the VC-driven, digital media hockey stick of near-infinite growth is badly bent, if not broken. Infinity, it turns out, isn’t infinite. Then, there’s Conde Nast’s suddenly getting paywall religion, announcing it will — after years of dithering — paywall them all, in some fashion. “I’m not sure what they are doing,” one magazine industry pro told me this week. “They’ll lose 90 percent of their traffic.” And so, as Condé has dispatched CEO Bob Sauerberg on the heels of a $120 million annual loss, there’s more potential M&A.

Is it all connected? And how much does it matter?

There’s Jill Lepore’s “Does journalism have a future?” Or Farhad Manjoo’s “Why the latest layoffs are devastating to democracy.” Jeff Israely’s “2009: The internet is killing (print) journalism. 2019: The internet is killing (internet) journalism.”. Or AP’s: “Loss of newspapers contributes to political polarization.”

CNN blared: “Media industry loses about 1,000 jobs as layoffs hit news organizations”.

And The Newseum, the temple of what-journalism-once-was, looks as if it could be sold off for parts.

All in two weeks.

Yes, it all matters, and it’s all connected.

The state of consolidation games

As January plummeted to a close, attended by those thousand or more journalism layoffs, where do we stand with all the huffing and puffing around newspaper company M&A? (The companies declined comment on their potential buying or selling strategies for this piece.)

At this writing, Gannett, having taken several weeks, will soon formally tell Alden Global Management a polite no to its “offer” to buy the company for about $1.5 billion on January 14. Though the Gannett board, which met Thursday, is suspicious that Alden doesn’t have the financing available to complete such a buy — and Alden, sources say, didn’t respond to its request to show Gannett its money — its public suiting has awoken Gannett anew. And that may have been its game plan all along, in making its “offer.” On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that Alden’s DFM has hired a financial advisor to press its buying case. (See my best reporting-informed speculation, below.)

So what do we do know about Gannett today?

Expect the company to soon complete its process of hiring a banker to work alongside its long-time advisor Green Hill. That banker will help Gannett assess its market position. Another way to put it: America’s largest regional daily newspaper chain, the globe’s second largest given its ownership of UK’s Newsquest, is in play.

“Ask the banker” will tackle these questions: Should Gannett sell itself — and at what value and price? Should it buy? If so, what? The company experienced corporate indigestion in swallowing whole the Journal Media group in 2016. Then, it kneecapped itself in making a hostile effort to buy out Michael Ferro’s then-new trophy Tribune Publishing/Tronc, later that year. It was enough to make Gannett publicly swear off buying more newspapers — even as its merger negotiations with then-Tronc (now Tribune Publishing again) continued.

Instead, CEO Bob Dickey, who’s headed into retirement this spring and was told to focus more on “digital” by his board, re-targeted his efforts in buying digital media. In fact, it was Dickey’s buy of digital marketing companies that gave Alden a talking point, as it stalked Gannett.

Meanwhile, Gannett continues to reel internally. In January it laid off dozens of people. It’s cutting back on its heavily promoted program of placing USA Today national news inserts in many of its 109 dailies, multiple sources told me. Those inserts have largely been standalone sections; now they’ll become more integrated with local newspaper sections. That saves on newsprint cost, which ran as high as $20 million annually when the sections were introduced five years ago. One potential result: less space for local news. And, of course, fewer journalists to fill the pages anyhow.

“I am getting the feeling that Gannett, especially with the January cuts, has moved a lot closer to DFM news staffing than is generally recognized,” one veteran news manager told me. “I see the El Paso Times [with a metro population of 844,000] shows 13 people on its news staff. The editor there retired some months back…One person told me their goal is not more than one senior editor per state…This all just makes me wonder if Alden really knows what has been cut in recent years. They wouldn’t have had the detailed financials, given that it’s a hostile offer.”

As the company looks for anywhere to trim, like all public companies, it eyes the calendar. In February, Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy, Lee and the other public companies will have to report their fourth-quarter, 2018 and full-year financials. They will be ugly. The question: How ugly?

Gannett has already announced cutbacks — but it won’t be alone as companies trim ahead of the earnings reports to show their commitment to shareholder value.

Fast-declining revenues are a certainty. But how did these declines impact earnings, and what do the CEOs forecast for 2019? As wheeling and dealing among newspaper chains continues, the price of assets — the valuing of merging, acquiring or selling — gets adjusted. The weaker the results, the more vulnerable the company. The more vulnerable the company, the lower a potential sales price or valuation in a merger.

There’s also financing to worry about. Financing is tighter now than it was in mid-2018, though it has eased some from December. That isn’t only the case for the ailing newspaper trade (see Tuesday’s news that Gamestop’s buyers couldn’t get financing to complete an acquisition). But it is truer of newspaper companies, given how tough it is to forecast going-forward earnings in an industry declining so rapidly. Any of these potential deals faces tough financing standards. “Lenders now want to see any deal include some deleveraging,” said one financial observer. “If it doesn’t, it won’t fly.”

How long will the consolidation games go on?

There’s lots of action ahead. For its entire history, the U.S. daily newspaper industry has been a fragmented one. In the beginning, local printers became publishers.  Most were one-offs, single proprietors. In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, chains — Gannett, Tribune, Knight Ridder, Advance, Hearst, MediaNews, Lee, and more — grew. But they were still outnumbered by the number of family-owned concerns across America. Importantly, no single company dominated the landscape.

Today, Gatehouse (under New Media Investment Group) leads the pack with about 155 dailies. Amid all the would-be M&A hysteria, Gatehouse CEO Mike Reed has stuck to his knitting and his strategy of buying up remaining family-owned, smaller circulation titles, some in small chains, as well as individual properties. It is an approach characterized by greater precision and less rancor — and the need to incrementally grow topline revenues by acquisition. Although the company performs at the top end of regional chains, it still is losing about five percent of its same-store revenues year over year.

Just this week Gatehouse bought long-time independent Schurz Communications for $30 million, adding 10 dailies and 10 weeklies to its total. Reed’s value-oriented buying — backed by ready, lower-cost financing through Gatehouse’s operator, Fortress Investor Group — has been steady. It will likely continue to buy, as it can more easily raise money where others can’t.

All totaled, three companies — Gannett, Gatehouse, and Digital First Media — now control about a quarter of the remaining daily titles. That’s a significant concentration, historically. But in an industry where expense reduction is the prime strategy, much more consolidation is likely on the way. Little regulation prevents it, and the financials all favor it.

There remain some newspaper chain CEOs who still see a straight line between maintaining, if not growing, their title’s journalism capacity and the product quality, mainly digital, to deliver. They are a minority, unfortunately. For one, fewer and fewer would-be buys — at the prices the market still demands as of this moment — appear palatable.

“Yes, we could buy select properties, but the multiple would have to be low enough, considering the reinvestment needed to maintain EBITDA through recession,” said one of the savviest, speaking of the Tribune titles. “And we just can’t justify the reinvestment necessary in these papers to get them through the recession.”

Q: How much does the fear of recession drive M&A thinking?

A: A fair amount.

The next recession may not happen anytime soon, but in the words of economist Sam Khater, there’s a “mental recession.” Corporate chiefs, in newspapers and in other industries, now largely assume one. For many thriving industries, that just means a re-calibration. For a newspaper industry in such a distressed state, this driver carries more weight. Buying any newspaper property may require more reinvestment and for a longer period if both revenues and profits take a further hit in a 2019-2022 recession.

The fear of recession is one of at least two drivers connecting those dots from Gannett/DFM to Buzzfeed/Verizon and Conde Nast. Everyone in the media business believes it is going to get worse — before maybe getting better.

Q: What is the other common thread?

A: Google, Facebook, and increasingly Amazon dominate digital advertising and will likely will take more and more share, especially into a recession. The most recent estimate is that they control 61.9 percent of the digital ad market, worth $111 billion. (For every one percent, you could pay the salaries of over 10,000 journalists, but I digress.) (Digital disruption has wounded every legacy news and information industry in the Western world and now it’s turned on the digital news disrupters as well.

Q: What does Heath Freeman, Alden’s president and Digital First Media magnate, really want? Is Alden a buyer, or a seller, or a lemon-squeezer?

A: There’s a one-word answer: Money. To his credit, in the stories often told by his former management, Heath and DFM are really straight shooters. They’re just greedy in the “Wall Street” sense, although today’s newspaper industry is rapidly redefining the possibilities of looting sinking ships.

Four possible rationales have emerged for Alden’s bid for Gannett:

1) Alden looks at Gannett and truly sees lots of fat, despite all the skinnying Gannett management has done for good part of the decade. That’s why Alden’s bid freaked out so many Gannett employees: It could get worse.

2) Alden wants to juice Gannett’s share price so that its 7.5 percent stake, bought at about $9.68 a share, will increase. Alden cashes in and makes more money without actually having to strip any more parts from any new newspaper company. Alden’s $12 offer shot Gannett’s share price up from the $9 range, and it still rests at about $11. On paper, then, Alden’s got about $11 million.

3) Alden actually wants Gannett to buy it, as rumored recently. Would Heath Freeman sell anything? Yes — back to the single motivating principle, profit maximization. Is it likely that Gannett, which is stumbling its way into the new wilderness with a lame duck CEO, wants to buy DFM properties? No, and remember that CEO’s opinion above about how much any buyer would have to put into distressed properties. DFM properties are among the most distressed.

4) Alden wants to put Gannett into play. If someone else buys it, sending up the stock price, Alden wins. If Gannett is put into play along with Tribune, and with McClatchy eagerly seeking a deal, then maybe DFM could offload some or all of its properties as part of somebody’s roll-up strategy.

If you had to bet (don’t), you’d pick the fourth one. Alden does not appear to have the financing to make a $1.5 billion hostile takeover of Gannett possible, though its hiring of a financial advisor may tell us it’s more serious than some suspect. SEC law complicates the second option. The third one seems unlikely. Why not just cause more chaos in the flagging distressed industry and see what new hand Heath Freeman may have to play?

Q: Why is February 7 important?

A: That’s the date by which Alden would have to file an alternative slate of directors for a contested election at Gannett’s spring annual meeting. The maneuver would show Alden is serious. (Bonus points to readers who recall that Gannett CEO Bob Dickey fatally wounded his own hostile takeover of Tribune two years ago by missing the deadline to file an alternative slate in a Tribune board election.)

Q: What’s with these change-of-control clauses? Haven’t they played a major role in Tronc/Tribune Publishing’s directing of millions to a few top execs while whittling down their newsrooms?

A: Yes. Those with lots of experience in C-suite thinking say that “change of control” clauses actually carried some logic. The idea: Investors don’t want top management to reject a lucrative buy-the-company offer just to save their own jobs and incomes. Pay them well in the case of sale, and you’ve removed that disincentive.

In normal times in normal industries, that might make sense. In the newspaper industry of this wretched decade, it’s just been one more perverse incentive. As Howard Schultz gooped his intentions to run for president, journalists noted that he makes 1,049 times as much as the median Starbucks employee. I haven’t run the numbers in the newspaper industry, but it’s a number worth researching. These jobs should be well recompensed, but along the way some companies lost their ethical center.

Q: So what’s going to happen in February, or March?

A: The consolidation games push everyone into the pool.

Gannett will “assess its future.” That probably means rejecting Alden for now. Its likely next move will be to pick up the talks with Tribune that it abandoned in 2018. Now that Ferro lieutenant Justin Dearborn has been dispatched (deemed more likely to mess up a Tribune sale than help lead it), and Ferro himself has told people he would give up his long-time demand of a board seat, a deal is more likely. It would involve a stock swap, with the valuation of who gets what chunk of mergeco still the contentious issue. And who would lead? New Tribune CEO Tim Knight is the last man standing in those two companies right now, but is he “digital enough” for Gannett’s board?

Tribune badly wants to sell, but hasn’t closed the deal. It rejected a $16.50/share offer from McClatchy in December, and now trades at around $12. Suitors have included Will Wyatt’s Donerail Group and Jeremy Halbreich’s AIM Media. But in the wake of rejecting McClatchy, it couldn’t move on either of those deals. Price and financing are issues. It will likely turn to Gannett again. Importantly, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 25 percent of Tribune, recently gave the Tribune board the ability to make its selling decision, giving up blocking rights. He wants out, and knows removing more obstacles to sale may finally seal some deal.

McClatchy was sorely disappointed that it failed to win Tribune. It would been more icing on CEO Craig Forman’s “deleveraging” cake, as he has pushed out the company’s big debt off into the 2020s. With Dearborn out, Soon-Shiong standing down, and Ferro’s interest maybe waning, could the deal be revived?

Or could Gannett solve its current identity problem by buying McClatchy? That would give Gannett an even bigger national footprint. But McClatchy’s $745 million debt (well down from what it borrowed to buy Knight Ridder 13 years ago) is a sticking point.

Still, financial analysts tell me that either the Gannett/Tribune deal or Tribune/McClatchy deal could result in $100 million or more of “synergies” — those cost savings that drive all of this action.

Finally, consider a few other players. Lee, a big chain of small dailies, could find a new partner. Gatehouse and Hearst will hang around the periphery, glad to pick up selected titles that may fall out of any big deals — if they can pencil them out to their satisfaction.

Worldcrunch, we might say, is everything and nothing like Skift. Not yet quite a mid-sized business, we are continuing our pivot from that initial news syndication model to a mixed approach that includes digital editorial services for clients, distribution, and a recent focus on photojournalism. We follow our passions, but we’re as pragmatic as Skift, and have finally (and proudly!) gotten our balance sheets to break even. But while both enterprises aim for a global audience and opt for depth and quality over chasing clicks, Skift has a more direct path to reach its market for one big reason: It’s B2B and topic specific. We are (shhhh) generalists.

Here’s Ali last week: “Media is a simple business: You pick a sector, cover the shit out of it, get an audience, you either sell them, which is advertising, or you sell to them, which is subscriptions or paid services, that’s it. There’s no other way to do media.”

No other way? That’s probably a bit of that swagger — and it’s clear he’s speaking about for-profit endeavors. Still, his words hold extra weight in the midst of the recoiling of some of digital media’s top general news operations. So we’ll ask again: Is there really no sustainable form for digital news other than B2B vertical media?

As a Paris-based but anglophone publisher, our business has grown by a kind of reverse engineering of the B2B model. We work across a range of topics, capitalizing on our English-first edge on the French (and European) market for both our paid services and modest worldwide audience. We’ve also tapped into partnerships and foundation support, while pursuing at least two distinct revenue opportunities linked to photography. Sure, forging ahead without a specialization makes both our services and audience more diffuse. It requires us to seek ways to segment our coverage and audiences, while retaining the ongoing objective to make it function as a coherent whole.

But beyond product and model lie the twin questions of a media venture: pace and scale. The digital startup gospel often includes the pursuit of venture capital and/or a commitment to either make it big or fail as fast as possible. And this brings us back to the big industry news from last week. Rafat Ali has long extolled the virtues of keeping outside investment as limited as possible, warning about the downsides of the chase-the-eyeballs, venture-backed digital outlets that we’ve seen play out over the past 18 months, culminating with the recent avalanche of layoffs.

Don’t blame investors for investing, that is their job. The *only* job founders have, meanwhile, is to build a sustainable, long term business. “High growth at all costs” is NOT a necessary condition to it, merely a causation founders build themselves in their minds.

— Rafat Ali, Media Operator (@rafat) November 17, 2017

We made sure to never take millions from Disney or Murdoch. (Okay, so they never offered!) Still, it does feel like a better place to be right now for the founders to have ultimate control. You’ll often hear the term “runway” to talk about the time needed to build momentum to allow a business to finally…take off. Internet founders know that the lenghth of runway is calculated by a rather simple formula: cash × control, where a higher rate of self-generated cash increases the rate of control.

Watching the bad news of BuzzFeed and HuffPost layoffs spread on Twitter brought many of us with roots in the legacy media back to similar moments in the past (and present). Bitterness. Loss. Bewilderment. A smidge of self-righteousness, as we wonder about the state of our democracy when straight-shooting professionals who simply want to cover their beats, expose injustice, and publish quizzes are suddenly cut loose.

For old and new reasons, these are all questions worth asking — and anyone tossed into joblessness deserves basic empathy. Still, those pursuing a career in news are now almost required to also ask questions about the business side of the equation, and think hard about where our place can be in this industry that, yes, is consolidating, but also changing every day.

One of the mantras accompanying this round of layoffs is to blame it all on the “duopoly” of Google and Facebook for gobbling up all the ad revenue. No one can deny that something is fundamentally broken in the model for digital news — and much more of what is happening online. But breaking up the duopoly wouldn’t solve the deeper questions about how to make money delivering information when it’s available instantly, anywhere, and theoretically at zero cost. In 2009, it was: The internet is killing (print) journalism. In 2019, it’s: The internet is killing (internet) journalism. The truth is that journalism isn’t about to die — but neither is the internet. More than the next big thing, we should all be looking for a longer runway.

BuzzFeed “basically hit” $300 million in revenue for 2018, the Journal reported, but Peretti told staff that “revenue growth by itself isn’t enough to be successful in the long run. The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again.” (Unspoken there is that raising another round (a) would be difficult in an environment where investors have lost most hope of a large-multiple exit and (b) would certainly require a significant drop in valuation from the $1.7 billion it fetched in 2016.)

BuzzFeed also laid off 100 employees in late 2017. Late last year, the company launched a membership program for its news content — which some saw as an unusual mixture of public-radio-style fundraising and VC-funded company.

BuzzFeed is certainly not alone in struggling in this digital advertising environment. Digital-native media companies Vox Media, Vice, Mashable, and Refinery 29 have all laid off significant numbers of staffers over the past year or so, while Mic laid off its entire editorial staff before a firesale to Bustle Digital Group (also now the owner of the suddenly staff-less Gawker 2.0).

And BuzzFeed’s layoffs weren’t even the only ones announced on Wednesday: Verizon Media Group, the owner of Yahoo, AOL, HuffPost, and other brands, is laying off about 800 people. (Oh, and don’t forget the old media layoffs: Wednesday, Gannett; previously, The Dallas Morning News and lots of other small cuts that don’t even make industry news anymore.) These events are depressing on their own but, combined, feel disastrous — especially since, as The New York Times’ Mike Isaac wrote in his 2019 prediction for Nieman Lab:

The biggest albatross is that big media companies like Disney (focused on fighting Netflix) and NBCUniversal (not sure what they’re focused on!) aren’t buying. Four years ago, if you were a BuzzFeed or a Vox, you’d just eye NBC as your exit path. Now that story isn’t as attractive.

Even worse is that if the most promising startups are getting passed on, what happens to the small fries? Mic, Refinery29, Mashable — that ilk— will all have to make some hard decisions (and some already have, as we’ve seen).

(Let’s also not forget that this is happening at a time of 3.9 percent unemployment, rising corporate profits, and healthy overall economic growth. The next recession might be mild for the country overall, but it won’t be for the news business.)

BuzzFeed’s specific job cuts are still not clear; Peretti said in his memo that the staff would have specifics by Monday. One Media Twitter fear is that BuzzFeed News, the company’s investigative and reporting unit, will be particularly hard-hit, having been less affected in previous cutbacks. Another possibility is international retrenchment: BuzzFeed U.K. editor-in-chief Janine Gibson announced last week that she is leaving the company, and the U.K. staff was disproportionately affected by the 2017 layoffs. BuzzFeed confirmed there would be layoffs in News and International but wouldn’t share how they’d be divvied up. (BuzzFeed News has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting the past two years.)

Hiring at both BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News had already slowed down substantially before Wednesday’s announcement, according to numbers compiled by ThinkNum: “In April 2017, BuzzFeed was hiring for as many as 185 positions. As of last week, it listed just 48. Hiring at Buzzfeed News has all but stopped: In August 2017, the division was hiring for 21 openings. By October 2018, BuzzFeed News listed only one open position.”

The scariest thing this time around is that it’s not easy to pinpoint what exactly BuzzFeed did wrong. Yes, it seems to have hit a limit for how far a strategy reliant on native advertising and social distribution can go — but it’s also adjusted, trying to build revenue streams out of programmatic advertising, merchandising, and yes, that membership play. You can comfort yourself with the notion that Mic and Mashable were ridiculous anyway — but when the BuzzFeeds and the Vox Medias get hit repeatedly, it’s harder not to see the revenue problems for ad-driven news online are systemic.

Two months ago, Peretti floated the idea of a sort of digital publishing Justice League, “a series of mergers with five or six top internet publishers,” conglomerating into a BuzzVoxViceNine29Corp. He framed it as a way to better compete with Facebook and Google for ad dollars (and more favorable terms). But the real bottom-line impact of any such deal would come from cost-cutting, not any newfound market power. BuzzFeed appears to be getting a headstart on that.

What if there is literally no profitable model for digital news? Or none that actually scales and endures without, say, the established readership base and brand of the NYT. This seems…increasingly likely to me?

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 23, 2019

Here’s the thing. Hardworking journalists have seen pay cuts and jobs disappearing for years. But for at least a decade many were told it was their own fault, for not getting it, for not being more adaptable. So when the most adaptable stumble , then what?

— emily bell (@emilybell) January 23, 2019

What really makes me sad is that in many cases journalism *isn't* failing, it's just that any profit made is immediately redirected to the task of making exceedingly rich people even richer

— Alastair Coote (@_alastair) January 24, 2019

Worth reading: "When companies downsize, diversity takes a hit — even if it previously was treated as a priority. Here’s how that plays out.” https://t.co/up9BpVW7Iq

— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) January 24, 2019

6:30pm — News of BuzzFeed layoffs

6:31pm — Scheduled fire alarm testing throughout BuzzFeed HQ

You can't make this shit up.

— Matt Kiebus (@mjkiebus) January 24, 2019

Walking into BuzzFeed next week pretending there aren’t going to be layoffs pic.twitter.com/ODeflbfTF8

— Shyla Watson (@shylawhittney) January 24, 2019

Facebook has fallen flatter on its face, The Social Network is in danger of becoming a social disease. Google maintains its primacy, even as its CEO is called to Capitol Hill to explain how the current president’s name somehow appears when “idiot” is typed into its engine.

Greed isn’t just good in the minds of many — it’s the long-term strategy for some who’ve somehow gotten a hold of the only business framed in the First Amendment. Phone companies spend billions on “content” properties and them mark them down (and out) like Kmart bluelight specials. Press gets kicked out of the White House — for asking questions. Even the anachronistic White House Correspondents Dinner can’t break a smile. We require, at a minimum, Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe to best reflect on these idiocies of the moment, but they’re in short supply.

We also sense in all the ferment — political, social, and journalistic — something else brewing for 2020s, but we can’t yet identify it. So let’s see if we can make a little sense of the year that was.

The reader revenue revolution is real.

There’s a simple reason why we see so many double- and triple-bylined stories in The New York Times these days: lots more journalists. In 2014, the Times was still struggling, losing revenue year over year. Its newsroom numbered 1,100, and buyouts and layoffs remained a feature of its business. Today, the Times tells me, it counts 1,500 staffers in the newsroom — up 36 percent in four years and 15 percent in the last two years. (In 2016, it reached 1,300.)

The Washington Post has had its own impressive ascent — but its newsroom peoplepower is still only about half of the Times’. Today, the Post’s growing newsroom pays 825 people, up 37 percent in two years from 600. When Jeff Bezos took over the Post, the staff had been reduced to about 500.

Both have built enviable digital subscription businesses, the Times at more than 3 million, with more than 4 million in combined digital and print. The Post is far less public about its numbers, but it passed 1.5 million digital subscribers not long ago.

And then there’s the Los Angeles Times, beginning to play catch-up after Patrick Soon-Shiong’s green-lighting of Norm Pearlstine’s hiring binge. It’s tough to put a new number on the L.A. Times, and to figure how many are new positions and how many are replacements for the numerous staffers who have left over the past couple of years. All totaled, including all those work for Times-owned pubs in L.A., the number seems to be about 540. For the Times newsroom, it’s about 480.

It’s no secret that local dailies have enjoyed far less success with digital subscription, for lots of reasons. Now, they’re trying — once again — to create sports niche subs, but they’re unlikely to match the out-of-the-box digital sub success of The Athletic. And as the year ends, the direct-to-reader, ad-free The Correspondent has once again shown us its own contrarian ways, raising $2.5 million in an accelerated crowdfunding campaign to launch a U.S. edition mid-2019.

If Mic was the end-of-year whimper, Verizon’s Oath announcement was the bang.

Verizon declared Tim Armstrong’s whole strategy worthless — taking a $4.6 billion writedown on both its AOL and Yahoo purchases. I couldn’t help but think of the 18-year-old image of AOL founder Steve Case grinning alongside a what-have-I-done Time Inc. CEO Jerry Levin. That was 2000. Nine years later, after Armstrong became AOL’s CEO, which had gotten to his own first payoff (Verizon’s buy of AOL in 2016) from poor bewildered legacy media cluelessly trying to buy a piece of the digital future — which, as usual, was already really part of the digital past by the time the deals closed. Urging his parent Verizon to buy Yahoo in 2017 was just icing on the overcooked digital cake. (Note: I mistakenly conflated Steve Case and Tim Armstrong into one person in an earlier version of this column.)

Oath, even at its height, could only claim second place in the branding malpractice department. Tronc will be hard to ever beat, even as that company has reclaimed Tribune Publishing again. Frankly, many of us are having a hard time letting go on the silly name.

Inside Oath, people have told me they’ve fared unevenly. Often left alone, they could chart their own company’s paths. But the absence of an overall strategy — how to link up these islands of both still-in-play and misfit toys — dogged Verizon’s purchase from day one.

At the end of this decade, the pipes companies — the distributors, including the old phone companies Verizon and AT&T — have survived and had money to spend, however recklessly. That money? It was ours, spent on paying for what’s coming out of the pipes. That massive cash flow, from our Internet-connected wallets and phones, fueled these nonsensical buys. And in the end, that strands even more journalists on uncertain ground.

The reversal of national news fortune looks increasingly complete.

Recall a headline from 2011: “The Huffington Post Passes The New York Times in Traffic.” Of course, “traffic” meant “monthly unique visitors” there, and the years since have finally almost killed that trick; the industry now understands more deeply the fact that digital news reading is about engagement, not the near-infinity of units (and bots, Macedonian or otherwise) that saw a single pageview blow by in the past 30 days.

It’s the legacy news sources — led by the Times, the Post, and CNN — that have both transformed their businesses to digital. At the same time, it’s those news companies which have steadfastly stayed on the biggest political and public affairs story of this generation, the Trump presidency. That’s not a coincidence.

BuzzFeed, Vox Media, and Vice — all still contributing significantly to the national discourse, each quite differently — are all looking for new futures. You can’t name a more high-flying dotcom news CEO than BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti, and he’s talking about being “open to M&A.” NBC has poured $600 million into BuzzFeed and Vox Media collectively. Given the recession-is-coming, batten-down-the-hatches consensus in many C suites, don’t expect any doubling down on that investment.

BuzzFeed is among those now moving more quickly towards…reader revenue. Yes, it’s all but certified conventional wisdom that the top two winners in the digital ad game are impossible to beat, or even take appreciable market share away from. The Google/Facebook duopoly has ended dreams of “overtaking The New York Times” or “winning a generation of Millennials,” as Mic had once proclaimed.

After pivoting from text to video (but not apparently enough towards its readers/viewers/customers), it could only fetch a $5 million say-goodbye payment once a Facebook video deal fell apart. Put the buyer, Bustle Media’s Bryan Goldberg, on your 2019 watchlist. We’ll see what he does with the Mic brand — and with Gawker, slated for relaunch next year. Having bought at firesale prices, can he find new value in this Internet age?

And then there’s HuffPost itself. Reimagined by editor Lydia Polgreen, it now must find itself again, within or without the Oath structure.

A Gannett/Tribune combo may re-appear in 2019.

No laughing, Tronc watchers. The battle that consumed 2016 may find a second act in 2019. With the McClatchy buy of Tribune looking kaput, a new round of mating dances has already begun, I’m told.

Gannett could buy Tribune — or vice versa. A merger would mean consolidation, which would mean lowered costs, which is the name of the game. Gannett is three times larger than Tribune in revenues; Tribune’s balance sheet is even more pristine (thanks to Soon-Shiong’s cash deal for the L.A. Times) than Gannett’s good one.

What could hold it up? Those two nemeses: Gannett CEO Bob Dickey and former Tronc chairman Michael Ferro, who just nixed the McClatchy buy. Dickey has just announced his retirement, and it’s unusual for a company to pull off a big deal with a lame duck in charge.

Then there’s Ferro himself, the big thorn in the last deal. Tribune CEO Justin Dearborn would probably try to keep Ferro away from the deal, especially as it includes talks with Gannett chair John Jeffry Louis, whom Ferro had harsh words for two years ago. But that won’t be easy.

Gannett’s next CEO won’t be one of the usual suspects.

Dickey never recovered from that maladroit failed effort to buy Tribune/Tronc. Even more, though, Gannett’s board now understands — sound familiar? — that it needs to get more digital more quickly.

The company has begun a national search. As Dickey departs, Gannett’s thin bench stands out. The biggest U.S. news company has few if any internal prospects. Sharon Rowland, Dickey’s corporate business head, is seen as the only possible inside candidate — and since she wasn’t named with Dickey’s announcement, her chances to ascend seem less than 50-50.

Don’t expect Alden Global Capital to sell anytime soon.

Remember the spring peak of the Alden fury? In March, it axed a third of its Denver Post staff and set off protests around the city, reigniting (briefly, once again) national recognition of the news desert enlargement.

Civic cries of “sell!” went unheeded, and largely unacknowledged.

I was able to describe in detail the outrageous profits that Alden was able to continue taking out of the Post and all the Digital First Media “properties.” Which answered the question, however dis-satisfyingly: Why would these guys ever sell?

Spin forward to today and the answer, those in and around the company tell me, isn’t much different. In fact, Alden president Heath Freeman has recently noted some interest in buying other chains. His rationale is quite understandable: He’s optimized his cost-cutting enough to keep profits flowing smoothly, pushing only a tenth of his subscribers a year to cancel. He believes he could “optimize” other chains and, to their dying moments, extract higher returns.

At year’s end, Digital First Media is losing its most outspoken editor: Mercury News executive editor Neil Chase departs to head up CALMatters, the three-year-old public policy statewide org modeled on The Texas Tribune. As he leaves, he salutes his Merc staff: “I’m very proud of what we accomplished in my time here,” he told me Tuesday. “We — not just me, the whole team — transformed The Mercury News and East Bay Times into what they need to be right now. We went from being defined by print sensibilities and deadlines and tools and thinking to being a true digital newsroom, focused on building the online readership that’s essential to our survival. And we did it amid budget challenges and staff cuts, delivering important coverage (punctuated by the 2017 Pulitzer Prize) and amazing features and the kinds of stories that have meaningful impact. The people in this newsroom really care, and it shows in the work they do.”

In forum after forum this year, Chase had noted matter-of-factly that he worked for a venal Wall Street investment company that made no bones about its singular interest — maximizing profit. For instance: “I can’t fault them for not investing in community journalism. But if they don’t want to, someone else should…Democracy can’t succeed without a free press.” He said it often, but with a small smile and without seeming angry. And, as he has pointed out, Alden didn’t even care, as long as he managed to keep the profit-producing presses running.

The hedge fund virus of newspaper ownership isn’t confined to North America.

After contributing to the demise of Canada’s major regional dailies, GoldenTree Asset Management took control of 172-year-old Johnston Press in the U.K. last month. Johnston publishes the “i” national newspaper and 200 other titles. As a bondholder, along with two other U.S. hedge funds — Carval Investors and Benefit Street — GoldenTree took the asset when Johnston couldn’t find a buyer in Britain’s beleaguered newspaper market.

That market has gotten so bad, that the BBC is now sharing its license fee proceeds in any effort to revive local news reporting. (Similarly, a new effort to boost the regional press in Canada is gaining traction.)

What’s GoldenTree’s Canadian legacy? Consider the “tawdry fall” of its Postmedia, or how Canada’s competition watchdog decried its job-cutting, title-closing ways.

Clearly, the native English-speaking world is in a heap of journalism trouble. Of course, that’s in part just a symptom of the wider times. Listen in to The New Yorker Radio Hour’s recent depiction of sad Brexit. On it, Rebecca Mead, one of the magazine’s London-based staff, offered this pithy observation: “The difference between Britain and America now is one of depression and psychosis.”

The ownership of American dailies may make less difference to the actual staffing of their newsrooms than we’d like to believe.

It’s now a familiar morality play. We have the venal Heath Freeman of Alden, bête noire to the interests of community journalism and journalists, on the one hand, and the family owners, best symbolized by the McClatchys of Sacramento, on the other.

Indeed, their motives may be worlds apart. And yet as journalists, we have to see the world for what it is. And that lies in strong part in the number of journalists newspaper companies now pay.

In my column this week on McClatchy’s apparent failed effort to buy Tribune Publishing, I noted that the company now pays fewer than 900 journalists, including its Washington bureau and design center staff. One alert reader did the quick math: “That’s an average of just under 30 per paper, which would be astounding.”

It’s good to still maintain a capacity for astonishment.

The deeper truth is that for those owners tied to the strictures of short-term profit (or break-even, in some cases), the pressures to cut newsroom staffing are near-universal. Alden’s DFM and McClatchy, along with the rest of the chains and many other owners, all continue to cut.

That’s doubly structural: The deepening spiral of (a) universal print decline and (b) short-term-oriented ownership that can’t do anything other than manage that decline.

Consequently, moving into 2019, we see two parallel but wildly uneven trends. There’s the Soon-Shiong buy-and-long-term-strategic-reinvestment camp, which is small enough to meet in a large closet. (Soon-Shiong likes talking in 100-year increments.) Then there’s the single driving motive of increasingly chained-up industry: consolidate, consolidate, consolidate. That’s a cost-savings strategy that doesn’t do much for growth. So the newsroom numbers only move in one direction.

The age of NINO is upon us.

Penny Abernathy’s ground-assessing research has given us “news deserts” and now, in her latest report, “ghost newspapers.” Both are highly descriptive. This year, I added NINO to that vocabulary: Newspapers In Name Only.

NINO has become my best reply to the hundreds (thousands?) of times over the years I have been asked the question: Will there be a day when we don’t have print newspapers? The smarter daily publishers still try to maintain a useful and intelligent print product for their remaining subscribers who are (over)paying. But travel the country and see how much those few remaining printed pages are filled with little and old and wire content. You’ll see quickly that, while they are still being printed, they are shadows of what previous generations got from their dailies. They’re newspapers in name only.

An uncountable number of highly motivated, talented journalists are ready to jump back into the fray — if only they can be paid.

Ethereum and blockchain have proved to be a sideshow, at least for now, as journalism faces the 2020s. Civil Media generated tweetstorm upon tweetstorm. And yet amid it all, dozens of journalists, even if paid uncertainly in dollars and coin, put together impressive sites — from the Colorado Sun and Block Club Chicago to Sludge and Popula. All totaled, roughly 100 journalists got some funding to their work through Civil. As the work of all those involved in INN and LION and in projects from Report for America projects continues to prove: If you pay them, they will report.

We’re ready to cast the next Hollywood blockbuster inspired by American journalism.

“Levinsohn represented by Harder! Secret tapes! Someone option the movie rights to this thing!” tweeted Alley CEO Austin Smith, as NPR’s David Folkenflik reported Michael Ferro’s further descent, “Tribune, Tronc And Beyond: A Slur, A Secret Payout And A Looming Sale.”

Maybe it is time, after the perhaps too-inspirational Spotlight and The Post. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had any inquiries to option the Newsonomics Tronc/Ferro motherlode, but hope springs eternal. [We’d have to work out a revenue split, Ken. —Ed.]

In the midst of Mr. Ferro’s War to keep his company “independent” (still seems like a wrong use of that word), I once suggested that Christian Bale (the Christian Bale of American Hustle that is) play Ferro. Perhaps we need to go more malevolent (Malkovich?) at this point, given the further allegations of sexual harassment and anti-Semitism. Comments are open.

Business (magazines) have moved (far) east.

When Chatchaval Jiaravanon bought Fortune for $150 million in November, it reminded us much of the business news market has moved to Asian buyers. Just four months earlier, Tokyo-based Uzabase paid $75 million or more for Atlantic Media’s Quartz. That followed Nikkei’s surprise purchase of the Financial Times in 2015. That was preceded by what became a tortured sale of Forbes to “Asian tycoons” in 2014, and ended in a 2017 settlement. (And Forbes’ new ownership has raised the big questions — again surfacing on Capitol Hill in the Google hearings last week — about how the Chinese government mandates in press censorship.)

Why the move east? There’s no one reason, of course, but there are several truisms. Economic growth has shifted to Asia, and the rising class of those involved in it (or who would like to be) are great audiences for the business press. In the U.S., the traditional magazine business has flagged more quickly than even Europe. That digital transformation continues to overwhelm that industry. Time Inc. sold to Meredith and sliced up. Then, just this month, Condé Nast got ready to dispatch its CEO Bob Sauerberg. The reason: insufficient progress toward a digital future.

The relatively few magazines that are finding a future are thought-provoking, reader-supported ones.

The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and Wired are among those that are making the digital subscriber transition. Each offers audiences a unique set of voices and reporting. Each, arguably, has risen to our times. It’s the shelter, fashion, travel, and lifestyle magazines — beset by unlimited free digital competition — that suffer, slim, and shutter.

The lesson, again, and again: Unique voices supported by subscribers point a way forward.

Public media seems to be at a familiar crossroads.

Can public media fill the yawning vacuum of local and regional news? That question’s been on the table for almost a decade. Too many of the U.S.’s hundreds of public radio stations still act mostly as pass-throughs for national NPR programming, offering scant original reporting of their own.

Certainly, the largest public radio stations — from WBUR, WNYC, and WAMU to KPCC, KQED, and OPB — have stepped up. But that’s mainly a metro area response. We do see networked improvements, as with the public radio’s Collaborative Journalism Network and Here & Now’s innovative use of regional correspondents. But it’s not nearly enough.

Public radio news directors’ Super Regional events continue to focus on the question, with solutions so far being more piecemeal than nationally strategic.

Into this landscape, as the new head of NPR News, walks Nancy Barnes, previously the respected top editor at the Houston Chronicle and Minneapolis’ Star Tribune. Barnes replaces the #MeToo’d Michael Oreskes (who’s found new work, it seems) after another “interim” year for NPR’s 400 journalists. She brings lots of experience from newspaper companies’ own efforts to harness both the full power of local and national. She will face the familiar and tough-to-change public radio culture, though. With CEO Jarl Mohn now stepping down, more flux is ahead — flux listeners would like to see turned into more local news.

Podcasting — and the newsy podcast — is now mainstream.

Seventy-three million Americans — 26 percent of the population — listen to podcasts at least monthly, according to Edison Research. Also important, podcast listening now matches up demographically with the U.S. population. It’s a great market: Younger women love podcasts.

Just this fall, The Washington Post, having studied the Times’ breakout The Daily success, launched Post Reports.

None of this is brand new, and the Lab’s Nick Quah has covered it in all its fits and starts expertly. What is interesting is that it all seems like prologue.

Smart-speaker penetration approaches 50 percent. The voice age is almost upon us. But there’s at least one rub: News companies aren’t ready for it. Talk to the good folks behind Alexa, Google Home, and Siri, and they’ll point to the lack of news company innovation in the field. Maybe this will change in 2019 — a new distribution pipe with new ad potential.

The news isn’t just the news anymore.

Recall the days of LIFO — last in, first out? That’s how news publishers shoveled their news onto to the web, and then smartphones. In fact, too many still do, relying on cheap-to-present automated mobile phone technology. That’s why you often get the latest non-happening out of the local Planning Commission at the top of your local newspaper feed on your phone.

Check out the Times or the Post these days, though, and it is a different world. Stories of greatest import can sometimes stay atop phone screens for much of the day. And the rank order of stories isn’t based at all chronology — with real breaking news of importance elevated to the top, of course — but again on perceived (and data-measured) reader interest and news value.

The phone particularly — now the origin of two-thirds or more of news reading minutes — hasn’t just changed news presentation. It’s changed news judgment itself. Put another way, and not just by the president’s supporters: Have these “papers” inevitably been politicized?

Regional news cooperation initiatives could be a new future, or just an intriguing interim.

As core daily newspaper reporting has so badly eroded, many smaller niche news operations have surfaced, filling gaps here and there.

In 2018, we saw them tested in several regions. The Democracy Fund backed the North Carolina Local News Lab Fund. In Philly, Lenfest money continues to push together regional reporting projects, through the Philadelphia Solutions Journalism Project.

Meanwhile, Bay Area-based Reveal’s own expanding Local Labs initiative finds novel ways to share both investigative chops and audio storytelling, pushing forward stronger regional media.

“We’ve gotten San Jose and New Orleans off the ground,” Reveal CEO Christa Scharfenberg told me last week. “We’re hiring a collabs manager shortly and will then launch the process to select two more cities. Based on outcomes from these first four cities — and learning from our earlier experiments in NJ, Mississippi, Oklahoma, etc. — the plan is to build a network of labs across the country that does three things: 1) increases the capacity for and volume of local investigative reporting, 2) gives us a pipeline of local investigations to bring up to the national Reveal platform, and 3) provides us with a network to tap into for localization of our national investigations.’

These fledgling efforts show that sum of often-smaller efforts can maximize impact. Are they smart Band-Aids or a wave of the future?

A president without boundaries and an Internet without boundaries have run headlong into each other.

Meanwhile, a press weakened in number but emboldened in spirit increasingly questions those uncertain frontiers — often finding itself ensnared in No-Man’s Land.

If this year has almost seemed too much, let’s recall a little wisdom from Dr. Seuss: “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”

It would never go behind a paywall, unlike other news organizations “because your ability to access news is important every day” — but after raising half a billion dollars in venture funding, BuzzFeed has now started a quasi-membership program for readers to chip in at $5/month. (And if you pay up front for the year you get a tote bag!)

BuzzFeed, Vox Media, Vice, and even Mic — R.I.P. — are part of the club of publishers born of the digital age, Miracle-Gro’n with VC money, constricted by the standard industry pressures, and now evaluating next moves. But BuzzFeed is, so far, the only one of them that has turned to a more granular, reader-revenue approach. For what it’s worth, that wasn’t expressly included in the plan last year:

BuzzFeed is expected to hit $300 million in revenues this year, after missing its $350 million target last year by about $90 million. Membership, which just kicked off last month after an open appeal to followers earlier this year, is one of the threads BuzzFeed is trying to weave together, with a Netflix series following their reporting process, a weekday Twitter live show, and a Facebook Watch interview series; affiliate links in a Wirecutter-like setup (something The New York Times has also relied on in its own diversification strategy); and running traditional banner ads, among others.

“It’s no secret that this has been a really turbulent environment for all our colleagues across the industry,” Shani Hilton, BuzzFeed News’s vice president of news and programming, said. “One of the things we’re doing this year is thinking more rationally about how to make decisions that support projects.”

Those decisions included cutting the podcast squad in September and laying off 100 business and U.K. editorial staffers at the end of 2017. In our conversation, Hilton highlighted how vital it was for the shows to have that on-ramp funding from Netflix, Twitter, and Facebook — “the shows all pay for themselves” — but we’ve seen how that can end, with Mic’s death spiral prompted by losing its Facebook Watch funding, for example. And this isn’t (yet?) a decision as much as a pipe dream, but Peretti has floated the idea of merging with other digital-born publishers, like Vox Media and Vice themselves.

This is the most baffling article. Why would a merger solve *any* of the (pretty extreme) problems faced by digital publishers ? Why not just organize into an *ahem* union and withdraw all that content/labor as a bargaining position ? https://t.co/Z01Wr7VmYE

— emily bell (@emilybell) November 20, 2018

(Peretti has dismissed the need for a union at BuzzFeed, hence the *ahem*.)

I am a ⁦@peretti⁩ fan but if the best possible outcome from merging five media firms is just “negotiating better terms from Facebook and Google” we should all just quit now. https://t.co/IFYKE5YDFJ pic.twitter.com/y9NnfGTfDI

— nilay patel (@reckless) November 19, 2018

"Today, BuzzFeed announced a new revenue stream: you…You can pay $5 a month for BuzzFeed’s articles, or you can pay $100 a year and get a tote bag. It’s like subscribing to NPR. Except that it’s not radio and … not public." https://t.co/7cTbarO0tr

— Saba Hamedy (@saba_h) November 20, 2018

Fuccckkk this. Audience revenue is such explicit, shameful, and immoral extraction if it doesn't come with any community governance, especially when conducted for the benefit of venture capitalists and not the public. https://t.co/b9WJp0dhU7

— Simon Galperin (@thensim0nsaid) November 20, 2018

Membership may be a new decision for a major VC-funded company, but this hefty database lists 47 for-profit news organizations and 35 news nonprofits with membership components.

BuzzFeed News has always had to overcome the reader perception of cat-quizzes-and-fidget-spinners BuzzFeed, and that delineation is more urgent in its membership drive. (Though who knows, maybe BuzzFeed quizzers would be more inclined to become members.) In a 2014 interview here at the Nieman Foundation, Hilton was still in the process of figuring out how news at something like BuzzFeed would work.

Our biggest news story might have 1.5 million views, which is a lot of people, but it’s a fraction of the biggest entertainment story that we have ever done, which was a quiz about which state should you actually live in. That had 45 million people or something crazy like that…We have a page that’s buzzfeed.com/news which has all of our news content, but 12 people go to that a day. We might eventually launch it as its own thing, but we haven’t yet.

Since branching out as its own, separately branded website this summer, buzzfeednews.com has seen an increase of 30 percent in monthly average unique viewership, BuzzFeed says. That translates to 35 million unique visitors per month and 230 million monthly content views for BuzzFeed News, meaning the total traffic from News posts on the site and videos on Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, YouTube, and Instagram. (There’s still no search on the site because it wasn’t a highly used feature for news content, I’m told.)

The membership numbers, though, are still unclear; BuzzFeed News spokesperson Katie Rayford told me the chip-in campaign has brought in “tens of thousands of revenue” with an average donation of over $20. Little napkin math says that, if the sum raised is, say, $15,000 (could be much more or less, but we’re operating on generalizations here), that would be something like 750 individual donors, a small fraction of their readership. (There are only two tiers of membership — one at $5/month and one at $100/upfront for a year, which comes with that tote bag!).

And what does membership at BuzzFeed News mean? Subscriptions, memberships, donations, etc. can get incorrectly schlumped under one big reader-revenue umbrella in industry-speak — and yes, they are different.

“For us, it’s a way to have our loyal audience play a bigger role in our journalism. We are very committed to doing original reporting and taking big swings, covering stories other outlets aren’t, and we know that’s expensive, time consuming work,” said Roxanne Emadi, BuzzFeed News’s head of audience development.

“Our members are passionate about the storylines we’re covering,” she said. “We want it to be a two-way street. We’re taking their feedback and we’re going to be sharing first access to maybe some new projects or in some situations to be beta testers for new initiatives. Their financial support for our journalism allows them to see what they’re passionate about [reported on] in the world.”

Some members have mentioned specific journalists as their motivation, like Craig Silverman and Jane Lytvynenko’s work on disinformation and debunking and Julia Reinstein’s reporting on the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooting, Emadi said. BuzzFeed News’s audience is 69 percent female and 43 percent ~~millennial~~ , but Emadi wouldn’t share any more specifics on if or how they’re targeting a distinctive slice of its audience for memberships.

Members also convert from BuzzFeed News’s newsletter collection, another lifeline publishers are leaning on this year.

One of the newest additions is the BuzzFeed Book Club newsletter, with more than 7,000 subscribers and an open rate of 50 percent. (The more general BuzzFeed Books newsletter has 140,000 subscribers.) It’s part of that book club so prominently mentioned in Peretti’s strategy grid, which kicked off in October and has a companion Facebook group too. BuzzFeed News already had a books section but with this has officially joined the train of other publishers enmeshed in books coverage.

The flagship BuzzFeed News newsletter has doubled its subscribers since a relaunch this year, and individual journalists have also fired off their own branded newsletters like Silverman and Lytvynenko, Charlie Warzel, and Alex Kantrowitz. Flagship newsletter writer Elamin Abdelmahmoud’s sendoffs have gotten attention (and side-eyes from BuzzFeeders toward alleged copycats) for their motivational messages, which the journalism industry could probably take to heart.

“Don’t rush your brain today — trust yourself and slow down.” (You can buy an official BuzzFeed News t-shirt with that if you want. $19.99, available in black, dark heather, and heather grey.)

Strengths of Effective Disinformation

— Speed of publishing

— Novelty and excitement of new information

— Responsiveness to news events and reactions

— Cooperative amplification between competitors

— Simplification of difficult subject matter

— Trust through a lack of affiliation and complicity with institutions

— Liberated from legal and ethical norms

— Playing to emotions, fears, biases and reactions

— Recognition of altruism as a motive for publishing (i.e. shedding a light on unknown/hidden information)

— Audience participation (i.e. share this to help spread the word)

— Tapping into a community’s passions and beliefs

— Allowing the audience to feel as if they are part of an investigation or exposure of truths

— Engaging visuals

— Drives a desire to share

— Successful business model driven by attention economics

— Great at targeting on Facebook and other social networks

— Offering related content on the same topics

— Identity validation of the reader

What do conservatives believe about news? Tow Center fellows AJ Bauer and Anthony Nadler have an FAQ in CJR about the history of conservative news in the U.S. “We are co-editing a book on conservative news cultures that we’re hoping will help bring together different strands of research. We’re also working, along with Magda Konieczna of Temple University, with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism on research to illuminate the news values and routines animating conservative newsrooms through interviews with conservative news reporters and editors.” They write:

One of us (Nadler) has been conducting interviews with conservative news consumers in Southeastern Pennsylvania. A theme that has emerged is that many conservative news consumers feel strongly that their personal identity, as conservative, is under assault by liberals and liberal institutions. Many interviewees believe that liberals see conservatives as deeply morally flawed and seek to humiliate them and exclude them from any legitimate place in political discourse.

Conservative news amplifies these beliefs by focusing on stories that reinforce them. The intense feelings of threat can make any criticism of conservative politicians or policies — whether lodged by news commentators or celebrities — appear tied to efforts to humiliate conservatives. This is part of what makes the overarching story told by conservative news compelling to its audiences: Not only is so much at stake in terms of political outcome, but also the political contest is pitched as a battle with forces striving to degrade and shame the very conservative identity shared among the audience.

“I have many sources of existential dread in my life and at times this is one of them.” BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman did a Reddit AMA. Excerpt:

How do we react to misinformation without freaking out? The U.K. fact-checking organization Full Fact released a report this week arguing that “rushing to come up with quick solutions to the range of issues could do more harm than good.” Or, as the authors write, “People getting things wrong online is not in itself a harm that merits a policy response.”

“Recognize that the greatest risk is of government overreaction and put the protection of free speech at the forefront of every discussion about tackling misinformation in its many forms,” the authors write. “We should take advantage of the window of opportunity we have to consider and deliver a proportionate response.” The areas where they see the most urgency are updating U.K. laws and transparency around political advertising.

The report also includes a chart showing the misinformation-related actions that countries around the world are taking. Craig Silverman wrote for BuzzFeed News this week about a proposed fake news law in Singapore that, if passed, “would be the most far-reaching fake news law passed by a government so far.” Singapore ranks 150 out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. The law would give the government

“powers to swiftly disrupt the spread and influence of online falsehoods” and to prevent people from earning money from online falsehoods. It calls for criminal penalties for those who meet a threshold of “serious harm such as election interference, public disorder, and the erosion of trust in public institutions.”

“If it establishes a new model for the speedy removal of content from Facebook, Google, and Twitter,” Silverman writes, “it could be emulated by others.”

And BuzzFeed’s Davey Alba and Charlie Warzel reported that Facebook recently met with “academics, researchers, and civil society organizations from Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere to discuss misinformation and propaganda.” One thing they reportedly discussed was “country-specific policies and community standards tailored to crucial cultural nuances of the regions, rather than blanket policies for [Facebook’s] 2.23 billion users worldwide.” One hypothetical:

A piece of inflammatory or violent content that would typically be quickly contextualized or deemed newsworthy in the United States and parts of Europe might be allowed to remain on the platform, while it would be removed in other countries where it is more likely to be quickly decontextualized, weaponized, and reposted.

Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source of facts. Breitbart should “not be used, ever, as a reference for facts, due to its unreliability,” Wikipedia editors voted last month. From Motherboard’s Samantha Cole:

Last week, Wikipedia editors held a similar vote for Occupy Democrats, a progressive website. As it’s a political activist movement outlet, and not a reliable news source, it can’t be cited on Wikipedia as fact.

They also started a discussion for InfoWars’ reliability, but the vote was closed, citing the “Snowball Clause,” that no sane editor would cite InfoWars in the first place (giving it a “snowball’s chance in hell” that it’d be used and left up on the site except in exceptional cases.) In any case, InfoWars is also generally banned from being a source on the site.

“‘Information noise’ is the promulgation of unassailable, ultimately trivial facts deceptively packaged as meaningful news.”

“Infoshum” (info noise) has become a major theme in the Russian news media. Columnist Oleg Kashin describes the concept here, and how this isn’t the same as “fake news” or “post-truth.” pic.twitter.com/CKWuGIWDnr

— Meduza in English (@meduza_en) October 2, 2018

The JS special issue from last year's Future of Journalism Conference held at @CardiffJomec is out. Edited by @bennettlucyk @StuartAllan123 & Mike Berry, it contains lots of accessible, and shorter than usual research papers and essays. Access here: https://t.co/E97MOIZTCQ

— Journalism Studies (@journstudies) September 6, 2018

Even if the work isn’t hot off the presses, there are still quite a few valuable insights in the collection. I sifted through the papers, and here are a few I liked:

“Truth is What Happens to News: On journalism, fake news, and post-truth,” by Silvio Waisbord:

Here I propose that the phenomenon of “fake news” is indicative of the contested position of news and the dynamics of belief formation in contemporary societies. It is symptomatic of the collapse of the old news order and the chaos of contemporary public communication. These developments attest to a new chapter in the old struggle over the definition of truth — governments waging propaganda wars, elites, and corporations vie to dominate news coverage, and mainstream journalism’s continuous efforts to claim to provide authoritative reportage of current events.

The communication chaos makes it necessary to revisit normative arguments about journalism and democracy as well as their feasibility in radically new conditions. Conventional notions of news and truth that ground standard journalistic practice are harder to achieve and maintain amid the destabilization of the past hierarchical order…

Also, we should cautiously approach any innovations with democratic possibilities. Journalism studies have a spotted record identifying trends as potential saviors of news and democracy. In recent times, the field has praised several innovations—public journalism, citizen journalism, hyperlocal news, startups, and digital news activism. All have made important contributions to news diversity and quality, but the problem goes beyond specific experiences.

Recent love letters to journalistic innovations today read like declarations of world peace in 1938. Resisting the temptation to find sure-fire redeemers of journalism is important. Learning from past experiences of hope and disillusion may provide good insights to recalibrate normative arguments. All good practical ideas stand on a precarious situation given the instability of journalism in a new context.

One particularly difficult question is implementing the vision of journalism as nurturing a sense of public commons at the time of privatized spheres, manipulated opinion, hardened differences, and political tribalism and polarization. How is such vision possible when certain belief communities seem pretty content upholding fictions, refusing to engage with other epistemologies, and/or endorsing politics aimed at purging difference? How can journalism foster empathy, tolerance, reasoning, and other central values of democratic communication at a time of broken-up public life?

“The Information Politics of Journalism in a Post-Truth Age,” by Matt Carlson:

Although “post-truth” is riddled with conceptual shortcomings, its usage to describe the contemporary epistemic moment directs attention to the underlying issues it encompasses. This is particularly the case for journalism in the United States where antagonism toward journalists has already been a regular feature of political discourse, and has been magnified through the rhetoric of Donald Trump. Journalists face increasing challenges in their attempt to occupy the symbolic communicative center of democratic society while remaining outside of governing power.

Contemporary information politics are marked by a power struggle among competing groups to not merely contest claims within journalistic content but to contest the journalists making the claims. Given this context, this article argues that the epistemic context of contemporary journalism demands that journalists do more to develop arguments legitimating their claims to render valid judgments. This metacommunication includes a more vigorous and public articulation of the social value journalists offer, a self-critical stance through which they can address their weaknesses and limitations, and a defense against self-interested criticism directed at them by political actors…

Journalism has been and remains an object of struggle. Journalists’ power to create a shared symbolic world invites scrutiny, some of which is meant to rectify journalism’s shortcomings and some of which is meant to exploit journalism’s weaknesses for political advantage. Drawing a fine line between these two types of critical discourses is difficult and subjective. How journalism participates in this struggle is a matter of how it articulates its own extrinsic information politics rather than relying on the intrinsic arguments bound up in news reporting.

“Provoking the Citizen: Re-examining the role of TV satire in the Trump era,” by Allaina Kilby:

TV satire has been commended for its ability to hold power to account and provide audiences with context and alternative perspectives to news events. Despite accolades to public discourse and journalistic integrity, TV satire is fraught with limitations including; its inability to change politics, its ability to encourage political apathy and promote a partisan logic. While this may be a counter-liberal response to the right-wing media and politicians it critiques, TV satire often preaches to a converted audience, the potential impact of which can lead to a repudiation of deliberative politics and increased political disengagement.

Under the Trump administration, America is experiencing more intensified demonstrations of partisanship and public distrust in political and media institutions. Furthermore, in a culture where satire has become reality and critical journalism has increased, its role has become problematic…

This study found that TV satire has continued to reimagine the possibilities of the genre by adopting advocacy journalism practices that included solution building and audience motivation techniques. By adopting a hybrid mix of comedy and advocacy traits, both satirists [John Oliver and Samantha Bee] challenged the perception that satire is too angry to propose solutions to political problems. In fact, this study found that Oliver and Bee proposed strategies to help educate conservative news audiences and change journalistic practices, although these solutions were a tad ambitious.

The most significant finding was the satirists’ use of motivation building. It would have been far easier for them to make Trump the target of ridicule. However, this would have been an example of the same old TV satire narrative: attacking the powerful and preaching to the converted liberal agenda of its audience. Instead, Oliver and Bee redirected their satirical skewering onto their respective audiences. This enabled them to mock and criticize the audiences’ political self-righteousness, cynicism, and their superficial and unrealistic approaches to activism. These examples demonstrate the importance and necessary inclusion of advocacy skills within satirical discourse. After all, it is unlikely that comedic criticism alone would transpire into audience political action. Yet, when combined with traits of advocacy this enables the TV satirists to mitigate the impact of criticism by encouraging the audience to engage in more realistic and practical forms of civic participation.

“Finding a Place in the Journalistic Field: The pursuit of recognition and legitimacy at BuzzFeed and Vice,” by Paul Stringer:

This research explores how two digital native news organisations, BuzzFeed and Vice, compete for recognition and legitimacy in the journalistic field. Specifically, this paper focuses on the hiring practices and organisation of news coverage at both outlets, viewing these in Bourdieu’s terms as significant forms of capital that BuzzFeed and Vice valorise in an attempt to claim a place in the journalistic field. Findings suggest that BuzzFeed and Vice both challenge and reify existing ways of doing journalism, and thus play a double role in conserving and transforming the established cultural capital of the field…

As relatively new entrants to journalism, digital native news organisations look to establish a place in the field by adopting a hybrid approach to news work: one that “preserves certain ethical practices and boundaries that lend legitimacy” and “embraces fresh values … more compatible with the logic of digital media and culture.” This is apparent in the hiring and content strategies of BuzzFeed and Vice, which seem to be based, in principle, on achieving two different forms of legitimation: peer recognition, afforded to those “who internalize most completely the internal ‘values’ or principles of the field”, and public recognition, “measured by numbers of readers, listeners, or viewers, and therefore, in the final analysis, by sales and profits”…

While these more market-driven forms of legitimation have supported BuzzFeed and Vice’s desire for public recognition, a simultaneous desire to be recognised as legitimate by peers has led to emphasis on traditional journalistic norms and practices. This is evident in the hiring of experienced journalists, along with an investment in traditionally-esteemed areas of reportage, which, in contrast to strategies aimed at public recognition, appear more strongly connected to the promise of intangible rewards such as status, credibility, and prestige. This reinforcement and avowal of journalism’s traditional cultural capital ultimately has a conservative effect on the field, ensuring a certain level of continuity in journalism’s established “rules” or doxa.

“Media Repertoires and News Trust During the Early Trump Administration,” by Rachel R. Mourão, Esther Thorson, Weiyue Chen, and Samuel M. Tham:

Levels of news media trust have been steadily declining in the United States since the 1970s and frequent attacks against the press have characterized the first year of the Trump presidency. This study focuses on the relationship between media trust, news repertoires and support for Trump. Our goal was two-fold: first, we tested how individual predispositions influence patterns of media consumption (repertoires), which in turn predict news trust. Then, we analyze how attitudes about Trump relate to repertoires and media trust.

Survey results revealed four repertoires: low news users/some local news, news junkies, conservative news users, and mainstream news users. News junkies and mainstream news users trusted the media more, while conservative news users had the lowest levels of trust. Support for Trump is the strongest predictor of news distrust, even controlling for conservatism and news repertoires. Findings suggest that the impact of a White House that is hostile to the press goes beyond the way partisanship affects media trust…

Not surprisingly, results show that those who are left-leaning, news junkies and mainstream news users have higher trust levels, and conservative media users have more negative attitudes towards the press. This study, therefore, adds to the vast body of evidence that shows conservatives have higher levels of distrust in the mainstream press…

The impact of Trump attitudes in this model is remarkable: it explains more than 10 percent of the variance observed and is more than double the impact of partisanship alone. This finding strongly suggests that the influence of the President’s rhetoric goes beyond the traditional impact of Republican identification found by the literature…

It is clear that when these two institutions clash, citizens do “pick sides”: those who consume mainstream media have deep levels of mistrust towards the President, and those who are fervent Trump supporters gravitate towards consuming their news exclusively via conservative media platforms. This effect is significant beyond the impact of conservative partisanship. Taken together, our evidence suggests that Trump supporters are strongly engaging in selective exposure, shutting off from mainstream news sources that challenge their perspectives beyond the levels observed among Republicans in general…

It is important to note that we also found that news junkies included a small but noticeable percentage of Trump supporters. That is, not all Trump supporters are choosing the conservative news media pattern, but some are using a wide variety of news sources and spending significant time with them, which defies stereotyped demographics of this group. The motivations behind this media pattern are worthy of further investigation.

“Transparency to the Rescue? Evaluating citizens’ views on transparency tools in journalism,” by Michael Karlsson and Christer Clerwall:

Transparency has emerged as an ethical principle in contemporary journalism and is contended to improve accountability and credibility by journalists and scholars alike. However, to date, few attempts have been made to record the public’s views on transparency. This study enriches current knowledge by using data from an experiment, survey and focus groups in Sweden collected between 2013 and 2015.

Overall, the results suggest that the respondents are not particularly moved by transparency in any form; it does not produce much effect in the experiments and is not brought up in the focus groups. While that is the key finding of this study, it should also be noted that various forms of user participation are evaluated negatively, while providing hyperlinks, explaining news selection and framing, and correcting errors are viewed positively…

…respondents are most positive towards being informed when and why news reports are erroneous (e.g. corrections) and least positive towards journalists mixing reporting with their own opinions and entirely replacing journalists with audience-produced news content. It can also be noted that they do not seem keen to know the journalists’ own opinions, even outside of the context of news stories…

While most transparency tools, save participation, are received positively, it should also be asked if working with transparency tools is worth the resources required, because transparency seems to be of relatively little overall importance to the respondents. The lack of effect of and disinterest in transparency by the public begs the question of whether the performative level (i.e. journalists‘ actual work) is the driver of changes in norms, credibility and trust and, if so, what should the timeline of change be?

“‘Post-Truth’ Politics, Journalistic Corruption and the Process of Self-Othering,” by Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova:

The poorest EU member-state Bulgaria also has the lowest press freedom ranking, significantly lagging behind all EU members, including neighbouring Romania and Greece. While “a laggard” in many respects, the country has leadership potential in at least one area: “post-truth” politics is not a new phenomenon…

A 2016–2017 survey of Bulgarian journalists as part of the Worlds of Journalism study shows they have grappled for years with the kind of issues their Western colleagues have been lamenting about over the past few months—from covert collusions with political and business elites to a range of corruption practices such as bribes, “subsidised” smear campaigns and “sponsorships” of TV programmes in exchange for cover-ups. A resilience technique adopted by journalists is that of self-othering, which involves a strong condemnation of the “dire” state of journalism and distancing from the unethical practices that plague their profession without assuming any responsibility…

A journalist at a national daily newspaper highlighted the disjunction between ideals and practice: “Tragic, at the moment, journalism, the real one, the one we had dreamt of practicing, has categorically vanished”. A magazine journalist provided his interpretation:

One word — tragic. There is NO demand for quality journalism — either by society or by publishers. No resources and potential for professional development and positive recruitment. A very low level of trust in the media as a whole. Very low status (in terms of pay and prestige) of the journalistic profession. As a result— complete demotivation of the media workforce. A lot of the highest quality journalists have eloped to other professions. It’s a MASS practice for journalists to become PR professionals.

These papers — plus a few more on subjects including self-censorship around terrorism, plagiarism in Danish media, gender inequity in photojournalism, and feminist standpoint epistemology and #metoo — are all available here.

It produces fun quizzes people love to take, listicles centered around identities people love to share, and wildly popular food and recipe videos through its brand Tasty. It produces a ton of video series, like Pero Like and the Try Guys, or BuzzFeed News’ Twitter-native morning show AM to DM. It has dealings in Hollywood; it’s working with Netflix on a docuseries featuring its reporters, with Hulu for a documentary based on its investigations into R. Kelly. It sells merchandise, like Tasty cookbooks and fidget spinners with the word “chill” on them. BuzzFeed News has produced a Pulitzer finalist each of the past two years, and it regularly produces some of the most rigorous journalism around (for just a fraction: see here, here, here, here, and here).

But it’s always been confusing to readers, where the boundary of “cat listicles” BuzzFeed ends and BuzzFeed News begins; BuzzFeed says its own internal research backs this up. Even back in 2011 — on the very day the site hired Ben Smith to be its first editor-in-chief and to launch into journalism — then-Nieman Lab writer Megan Garber captured the tension:

The challenge…— and, potentially, the big opportunity — will be to combine reporting and reach to maximum effect. And to combine the distractional element of BuzzFeed with the informational.

And despite BuzzFeed News’ remarkable journalistic success in the years since, the general public seems profoundly unable to distinguish it from its sibling quiz factory. When the Pew Research Center polled Americans about what news organizations they trust or don’t trust, BuzzFeed finished dead last, 36th out of 36. It was the only news organization tested that was more distrusted than trusted across the political spectrum — from strong liberals to strong conservatives. The LOLs have proven a big hurdle for the news brand to overcome.

Well, the boundary between news and buzz is getting clearer, starting now: News content will live at the separate BuzzFeedNews.com, which will host a “full range” of stories in addition to its hard news stories, Smith told TechCrunch. Its updated “about us” section now reiterates its mission, lists the masthead, and lists examples of its work and impact. And its homepage no longer prominently features “LOL,” “wtf” and “omg.”

Basically, our research shows that some audiences have trouble distinguishing between BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News, so we're making that easier by moving stuff to a new, separate news URL. Story about it is here: https://t.co/gzPUDZrC9A

— Elamin Abdelmahmoud (@elamin88) July 18, 2018

Agree!

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) July 18, 2018

Click on a story about the transformation of a far-right media figure who killed his own father (currently at the top of the BuzzFeed.com homepage, just above “17 Jokes About Anthropologie That Are Waaaaay Too Real“), and you’ll be taken to a pretty different looking site. (Compare old vs. new.) The company also told TechCrunch that its news stories get more than 200 million pageviews every month, and that about third of its total audience reads news stories every month, though it’s unclear where that audience is coming across the content (total audience includes all readers on all of the different BuzzFeed properties). BuzzFeed.com will still display some BuzzFeed News stories that redirect to BuzzFeedNews.com, and vice versa. BuzzFeed News currently features a banner of BuzzFeed Non-News stories, including “Get Dressed For School And We’ll Tell You Which ‘Glee’ Character You Are,” “Chrissy Teigen Was Asked Whether She Would Run For Office And Her Response Was Chrissy Teigen As Heck” and “Do These Trends Belong To Millennials Or Gen Z?” (“It’s time for someone to claim tiny sunglasses.”)

BuzzFeed News has a new News website and I'm so excited to be able to send this link to sources and not get "I could only find the quizzes" (which are obvs excellent but for a slightly different audience) https://t.co/Zn77hkHYDx

— Jane Bradley (@jane__bradley) July 18, 2018

BuzzFeed revamped its org chart two years ago, splitting its entertainment and news divisions, which launched a new round of speculation that the news site was being prepared for sale. Splitting off to a new site did the same thing today, but a spokesperson for the company resisted that idea:

No.

— Matt Mittenthal (@mattmittenthal) July 18, 2018

There are some kinks to work out:

But change buzzfeed to buzzfeednews in traditional URLs and so far as I've seen it redirects.

I'm not sure why some stuff on BuzzFeed's home page *is* BuzzFeed standard and not news. Like why not this one, which has the old BuzzFeed news logo? https://t.co/0X9dUGthLT

— Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope) July 18, 2018

BuzzFeed News doesn't have its own search either? Perhaps the content still resides in a shared database between the sites? Or if they do plan to make a move to a different database the move isn't complete?

— Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope) July 18, 2018

(I can’t imagine the number of people regular visiting BuzzFeedNews.com and using internal site search to find stories is terribly high?)

In fact, just about anyone who linked to the article, tweeted a screenshot of it, or published the phone number had their Twitter account locked down for 12 hours. (Twitter PR: “We are aware of this and are taking appropriate action on content that violates our Terms of Service.”)

Twitter indeed has a policy against revealing other people’s personal information, but this raised two questions. First, Twitter’s speed dealing with these tweets seemed at odds with the many other times it has seemed slow (or unwilling) to police hate speech and abuse on its platform. And second, it’s one thing to ban tweets that share private information — but banning tweets that merely link to an actual news source seems different. That would seem to position Twitter as policing news content that isn’t even published on its site. Meanwhile, tweets like this live on:

Did y’all know that the Jews funded the Holocaust? Hitler was funded by the World Bank. (None of the numbers of deaths in the Holocaust add up) the Ashkenazi used the Holocaust to justify the taking of Palestinian land and the creation of bastard Israel.

— The All-Wise. (@ogkeema) June 17, 2018

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Social Media Land, Facebook’s running into trouble with its new ad policy, which can inaccurately consider promotions of news stories “political ads” — while missing actual partisan ads.

Hi there, @facebook. This is not political content. This is journalistic content that deals with policy. There's a difference.

Didn't you go over this with @ProPublica recently? https://t.co/kMCOzWanAY pic.twitter.com/3mSViK3sdv

— Reveal (@reveal) June 20, 2018

When news stories are sorted into the “political ad” category, the page of the organization must go through a lengthy authorization and authentication process. This includes, according to ProPublica, “submitting Social Security numbers and identification that Facebook now requires for anyone running ‘electoral ads’ or ‘issue ads.'” The Financial Times and New York magazine have stopped paid promotion on Facebook in protest.

Publishers requested Facebook include a “whitelist” of established organizations, an idea Facebook’s head of news Campbell Brown flatly rejected. “An exemption or whitelist would directly negate the new levels of transparency we’re trying to achieve,” she said in a statement to Digiday.

Facebook and Twitter have been trying to fight fake news for a while now — but better understanding the difference between news and not-news would be a useful first step.