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BuzzFeed investors have pushed CEO Jonah Peretti to shut down entire newsroom
- danso 5y agoNote of clarification since the branding is easy to conflate: "Buzzfeed News" is a part of Buzzfeed, better known for viral/listicle content, but has been its own entity, i.e. the "serious"/indepth news and investigations. Github repo of their open-sourced work: https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews/everything https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews/everything Previous HN submissions from the domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeednews.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeednews.com 2021 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/megha-rajagopalan-alison-killing-and-christo-buschek-buzzfeed-news https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/megha-rajagopalan-alison-ki...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
- hbn 5y agoThe name "Buzzfeed" itself, even if you didn't know what it was, doesn't bring to mind serious investigative journalism. It makes you think of content being shoved out as quickly as possible, about whatever topic is popular, in hopes of getting clicks. Which is exactly what their sans-"News" site is.
- Andrex 5y agoProfit at the expense of all else is toxic, in my book. The economic framework of capitalism doesn't absolve individuals of guilt, really. At the end of the day, a human being makes a decision.
- zrm 5y agoThings win by out-competing other things. Competition works, and is important, because you would rather make $1 for yourself even if it reduces someone else's profit by $10. Which is how the market gets $9 more efficient. Sometimes the status quo sucks. This is often caused by a lack of competition or some kind of information problem. In media it's a little of both, but the main one is that people don't understand how they're being manipulated because the people they rely on to help them understand things are the ones manipulating them. Social media algorithms aren't designed to make you happy or informed. They're designed to make you spend all day on social media. It's not that hard to design algorithms to do the opposite. That's not the problem. The problem is people aren't informed of the choice, or don't have a choice because the network effect locks them in and the network doesn't let them choose the algorithm. So we need to solve two problems. First, divorce the network from the algorithm, so people can choose. Second, people need to be informed, so they choose the one that works for them instead of against them. The person who figures out how to do this gets the $1 at the expense of costing Facebook $10. But they're currently getting nothing, and 10% of what the incumbents get is still a lot. So who wants to make money?
- adfgadfgaery 5y ago
- otterley 5y agoIf you can figure out how to make quality journalism profitable again, there are plenty of people who would love to find out.
- CamperBob2 5y agoEvery news source that maintains a paywall should get with Apple, Google and maybe Microsoft and Facebook/Meta and set up a syndication arrangement using all of these companies (at a minimum) as access points. Then, offer an "all access pass" where someone can pay, say, $1000 or $2000 a year, access any news article from a participating provider, and never encounter another paywall, anywhere. Additionally, for $5000/year, access is ad-free. The universal subscription fee would be divided among the syndicate itself for distribution to its members as well as its access provider. The majority (but not all) of the revenue would be allocated to the members on the basis of how many times their articles were actually read. You're welcome! Any other apparently-unsolvable problems need solving, you guys know where to find me.
- lupire 5y ago"What's the buzz? Tell me what's ahappening!" More people are interested in buzz than turned off by it.
- playpause 5y agoNot sure how this observation affects the point that the name “doesn't bring to mind serious investigative journalism”.
- hbn 5y ago> What's the buzz? Tell me what's ahappening! Note the lack of "make sure you know what you're talking about before you tell me" What you're describing is gossip.
- hoseja 5y agoAnd what you seem to be resistant to getting is that people viscerally love gossip.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 5y agoThey were bought by Bayer, which isn't much better, but they pretty much did do that: https://media.bayer.com/baynews/baynews.nsf/id/Bayer-launch-organic-vegetable-seeds-portfolio-enabling-greater-access-certified-organic-market https://media.bayer.com/baynews/baynews.nsf/id/Bayer-launch-...
- adolph 5y agoOur collection of more than 125,000 microbial strains allows us to use genetic diversity to develop new and beneficial products for farmers all over the world. https://www.bayer.com/en/agriculture/agriculture-biologicals https://www.bayer.com/en/agriculture/agriculture-biologicals
- Markoff 5y agoBayer, is it that company which made Zyklon B to eliminate Jews in WW2 gas chambers? I'm always astounded how are these companies still around.
- BongoMcCat 5y agofrom bayers wiki page: In 1925 Bayer merged with five other German companies to form IG Farben IG Farben the made Zyklon B, and as a result it got split up after the war, into it's original companies, one of them bayer. So, yes, you are mostly correct.
- Markoff 5y agoI know I am correct, it was rhetorical question, not exactly sure why downvotes, if people are that clueless they don't know such general knowledge, same as Fanta is originally Nazi drink.
- sonnyblarney 5y ago
- zeckalpha 5y agoFox News and watching the Simpsons on Fox is a more direct analogy. Any problem with the branding there?
- Larrikin 5y agoThe more toxic the news side becomes the more I've tried avoiding the Fox shows. Bobs Burgers is about the only thing on there I still regularly watch.
- PolygonSheep 5y agoDisney bought the non-news parts of Fox back in 2019 so all the animated/scripted shows have been owned by Disney for some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fox_by_Disney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fo...
- AussieWog93 5y ago>Fox News and watching the Simpsons on Fox is a more direct analogy. Any problem with the branding there? How? Nobody gets confused between a cartoon and a news program. They are completely differently offerings, branded completely differently. Buzzfeed, on the other hand, built up a reputation over years for pumping out lowest-common-denominator trash journalism, then later set up a serious news website under the same brand. It would be more like if Fox News bought out the BBC and called it "Fox News UK".
- lupire 5y agoBuzzfeed News isn't selling Buzzfeed to news readers. It's selling news to Buzzfeed readers, which is a deeply commendable activity and the branding is perfect for that.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- slickbot 5y agoIf you lookup the meaning of ‘ listicle’ on iPhone, ironically Buzzfeed is mentioned in the example.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoIf you don't have the majority youre not the owner but an employee.
- HWR_14 5y ago> If you don't have the majority youre not the owner but an employee. By that definition Bezos is (well, was) an Amazon employee. And Musk is Tesla employee. Zuckerberg owns a minority of shares but a majority of votes, so I don't know where he falls in your calculus. But I disagree with your statement as a whole, so I don't care too much about the line.
- colinmhayes 5y agoBezos does not own Amazon. Neither does Musk own Tesla. I would say Zuckerberg does own Facebook due to his majority control of votes.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoVoting is not ownership though so why would you say that of Zuckerberg?
- OkayPhysicist 5y agoThat kinda pushes you into the absurdity of the situation, actually. What is ownership, if not control? To own something is to control it, and to control something is to own it. Possession, control, and power are much more fundamental concepts than an illusiory idea of ownership sold to you by the finance industry.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI think you're overthinking it. The concepts of ownership and control are pretty well separated. It happens all the time. In leasing, for example, or silent partnership agreements. There's nothing illusory about it, the definitions about what you can do with Facebook voting and non-voting shares would be quite rigorously defined.
- exogeny 5y agoThis was easy to see coming. Prestige doesn't matter if you're a public company, all that matters is this quarter's results. Buzzfeed could play that game when their investors were happy that Jonah was incinerating their money, but now that they're public and their SPAC dropped like a rock, anything unprofitable has got to go.
- BaseballPhysics 5y agoEh, going public, by itself, doesn't necessarily result in this kind of outcome. There's plenty of public companies that are operating with little in profits or even at a net loss. Presumably the way this SPAC was structured resulted in a change of control, and if you make that decision, you get what you get.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago"Prestige" BuzzFeed was always a tainted name there inability to realize how shitty their reputation was and release real news under a different name directly lead to this.
- bitcharmer 5y agoI have no idea why you are getting down-voted. It's 100% true that the absolutely terrible brand that is BuzzFeed spilled over BuzzFeed News and hurt its public perception.
- torbTurret 5y agoYep. Literally every thread about buzzfeed news has multiple posts explaining the different pods of the business, with the caveat that BFNews is serious. An absolutely awful branding decision.
- tablespoon 5y ago> I have no idea why you are getting down-voted. It's 100% true that the absolutely terrible brand that is BuzzFeed spilled over BuzzFeed News and hurt its public perception. Don't you have that backwards? I was always under the impression that BuzzFeed News existed to help prop up the BuzzFeed brand's reputation.
- klyrs 5y agoMore toxic investors who think the world needs more ads, less investigative journalism. Good to hear that Peretti is pushing back, but somehow I doubt that he'll last if he keeps it up.
- Aunche 5y agoTalk is cheap if you aren't the one footing the bill. The investors are likely in the top .001% in spending money on investigative journalism, but if they don't spend even more money on it, they get to receive criticism for killing journalism from people who made more lucrative investments.
- eatonphil 5y agoMaybe some investors are ok with an organization in a company losing $10M yearly but it doesn't really strike me as toxic for them not to be ok with this.
- droopyEyelids 5y agoEvery time I change the oil in my car it loses me money, but it's important to the overall function of the car.
- eatonphil 5y agoA CEO of a public company is responsible for selling investors on what he/she is doing. If News is fundamental to the company or to his vision then he is responsible for explaining that or selling that vision. If investors don't believe in it I don't blame them per se I'd just say the company either shouldn't be public or they should have a CEO that can reasonably explain to investors why they should care that News exists.
- Apocryphon 5y agoTale as old as time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30768059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30768059
- supercheetah 5y agoBuzzfeed should have never gone public. Pretty much the entire purpose of the rest of Buzzfeed was to ensure funding of Buzzfeed News.
- barney54 5y agoI agree that Buzzfeed should not have gone public. For those of us who are more cynical, we see Buzzfeed News as the reputable veneer on the listicle business. The actual news organization was started 5 years after the listicle business.
- Kylekramer 5y agoBuzzfeed's purpose was to make money. Buzzfeed News was a semi-successful attempt to take money from advertisers who preferred high minded NYT/WSJ type audiences by gaining the reputation of "no, no, you see Buzzfeed News is the serious part, it actually does good stuff!". It didn't work because the financial cards are stacked against print media, there is basically NYT and then tech billionaire charity cases like The Post and The Atlantic.
- MangoCoffee 5y agothe fun part of Buzzfeed IPO is most of backers of SPAC pull out. Buzzfeed received less money and its stock have been drilling ever since. Expensify which featured on HN a few times have been drilling as well since IPO.
- MattGaiser 5y agoLosing 10 million a year with 100 employees? Either journalists make a lot of money or Buzzfeed News makes next to nothing.
- prometheus76 5y agoI don't know. If you just straight-out divide 10 million by 100, it comes out to 100,000 per employee. If you spread that out with some management, and take into account that the burdened rate of an employee is typically 1.4 times their salary, that sounds pretty accurate if the company has very little revenue.
- TylerE 5y agoIf we're talking real journalism, I'd expect cost per head to be quite a bit higher than average, due to lots of expensed travel.
- devmor 5y agoIt costs a lot of money to run a business. 100 employees is a lot of people. Even if you paid them nothing more than median wage (~$52k), with healthcare and other HR costs that easily adds up to the lions share of $10 mil. And this is just talking about people. Not servers, office space, equipment, contracts & rental fees, licensing, etc.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- antattack 5y agoBuzzFeed News had interesting reports on Peter Thiel. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/peter-thiel-anti-woke-film-festival-trevor-bazile https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/peter-t... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-d...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Vaslo 5y agoNews? Not seeing a single thing that isn’t biased far left nonsense.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoHardly. Clearly they are left leaning but they back up their opinion with facts. For example calling out Republicans using half-truths against Jackson to try and make her look bad. That's some good reporting. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court-republicans https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/ketanji-brow... We need more of this kind of journalism to keep the facts out there and point out lots of pols twist things to fool the public.
- hunterb123 5y agoCould you summarize the facts? "Calling out half-truths" is not an example of a fact. It's a clear slant of D good, R bad, here's how we explain away what R's are saying because we think X. There's a million left-wing outlets to do this, Buzzfeed News will not be missed.
- HWR_14 5y agoI didn't see much "D good". There was a bit of "Specific R bad", but they only quoted that left-wing rags like the National Review to back up that what they said was bad. I won't repeat them, because they were less half-truths and more "meritless to the point of demagoguery" - (National Review).
- spoonjim 5y agoInvestors are the worst possible people to tell you how to create something great. I've never seen a notable public market investor who made the world a better place.
- droopyEyelids 5y agoI want to say Carl Icon's push to separate PayPal from eBay was beneficial. Not that PayPal stock has done so well lately, but it's a real company providing a real service now, and overall the calculus is positive This doesn't really dispute your point though. Rules tend to have an exception or two.
- Traster 5y agoPaypal separating from eBay was good financial engineerings, but at the end of the day you've got two crappy companies with 1 sinking faster than the other, neither has done well since, and separately they're both too small to compete in their markets.
- chii 5y ago> I've never seen a notable public market investor who made the world a better place. which isn't their goal. Investors' goal is to earn the highest return possible on their capital they invest, and take the lowest risk possible they can get away with. Making the world a better place is something a charity does. Making money is what a company does. If the company incidentally makes the world a better place, that's great, but why does anyone expect this to happen?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eggsmediumrare 5y agoYou say this like it's the natural order. There is room for ought.
- spoonjim 5y ago
- wlakjlkjkerg 5y ago
- nojito 5y agoNews doesn't make money unless you're a solo operation out of a basement or behind a paywall with 100+ years of experience under you.
- tablespoon 5y ago> News doesn't make money unless you're a solo operation out of a basement or behind a paywall with 100+ years of experience under you. A solo news operation sounds a lot like a OS written by one person. At some point, it takes more labor to build something than one person is capable of.
- Apocryphon 5y agoA fictional rendition of this process in modern journalism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvXi8W9o_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvXi8W9o_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnYVH_Rrp00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnYVH_Rrp00
- mimikatz 5y agoHere is the funny thing. People want to throw shade at the investors, but Buzzfeed staff themselves frothed when they couldn't sell off their stake in the company. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/how-former-buzzfeed-employees-missed-their-big-payday https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/how-... "As it turned out, for many former employees, it was all too good to be true. This past Monday, as BuzzFeed went public, many of them learned something alarming: they weren’t able to trade the stock that they had waited years to exercise." When you have skin in the game it aligns interests.
- robocat 5y agohttps://archive.ph/nVEYM https://archive.ph/nVEYM “As the markets opened on December 6th, former BuzzFeed employees contacted their brokerages to initiate trades, but later found out that the type of stock they held, known as Class B, couldn’t be publicly traded yet. That evening, Continental, a stock-transfer company that BuzzFeed had engaged to facilitate the spac merger, sent an e-mail informing former employees that, in order to trade their Class B shares, they would have to convert them into Class A shares. In order to complete the process—which would take three to five business days—former employees were informed, they would need to print the e-mail, sign, scan, and return it.”. “An e-mail circulating among former employees this past week raised the question of whether they could have a legal case. “This is rotten and definitely slimey, but I have not figured out if it’s illegal,” a person wrote. When asked whether anything illegal had occurred, Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed, said ‘of course not.’”. And this only applies to past employees that exercised their options - paying some money and taxes for their equity.
- RonaldOlzheim 5y agoHello, I´m trying to connect with you on Linkedin. Can you send me a message? Ronald.
- robocat 5y agoI’m pretty sure you have got the wrong person: I don’ t have a LinkedIn account. I am a JavaScript dev from Christchurch, New Zealand.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoLol the only thing worth keeping in that whole mess.
- iamleppert 5y agoShut it down and move all the employees to contractors, get rid of all benefits, put up a paywall, and only pay the employees when they actually deliver quality material that you can run ads on.
- usednet 5y agoFound the private equity ghoul
- richardfey 5y agoThey have a reporter in Ukraine, Christopher Miller: https://twitter.com/christopherjm https://twitter.com/christopherjm
- InCityDreams 5y agoAnd?
- xeromal 5y agoMore information? Or is that not enough?
- briandilley 5y agoOH NO! where will i get TOP 100 CELEBRITY DOGS THAT LOOK LIKE POISONOUS FROGS lists in the future?
- Sebguer 5y agofrom Buzzfeed, because this isn't talking about the team that writes those clickbait listicles
- tablespoon 5y ago> OH NO! where will i get TOP 100 CELEBRITY DOGS THAT LOOK LIKE POISONOUS FROGS lists in the future? Oh don't worry, you'll still get that. In fact, that's all you'll get. Investors know how to sort the wheat from the chaff to provide us with the race to the bottom our society really needs.
- cwkoss 5y agoBuzzfeed news is the only part of the organization providing any value to society
- chii 5y agothe value that is being subsidized by the viral clickbait mess of the regular buzzfeed site, seeing as nobody wants to pays actual money for the "societal value" that you mention
- karaterobot 5y ago> “Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” [Peretti said] This part confuses me. The newsroom is a loss, but buzzfeed as a whole is profitable, got it. But if buzzfeed as a whole is profitable even with the news division in the red, what does it mean to say you "don't have the resources to support another two years of losses"?
- Markoff 5y agoI guess it means it's waste of money and they could be more profitable without news division, which is their responsibility to stockholders.
- macintux 5y agoExcept it’s not. Their duty to the stockholders is to be responsible, not to maximize profits. If they feel their news division is important to the company and the community, that’s a perfectly valid reason to maintain it.
- manquer 5y agoActually duty to the shareholder is do as shareholders ask . Those things could be responsible or profit maximizing or not. Legally it is hard to define either as they vague and subjective, obeying the board directions is much easier to define and codify in law. If management does not do as shareholders ask , shareholders can get management replaced by nominating and voting for directors who want the same thing in the next general meeting or call for a emergency one. Management reports to the board and the board reports to the shareholders. It is hard to counter the direct wishes of all shareholders combined. However rarely all shareholders want the same thing. Management themselves own substantial shares and obviously will feel different for example.
- russellbeattie 5y ago"Maximizing shareholder value" has been cause of more evil in the past 100 years than just about any other philosophy on earth, and that includes fascism.
- faangiq 5y agoNo! Not the Buzzfeed newsroom!
- guender 5y ago
- WhyNotHugo 5y ago> Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-pushed-ceo-jonah-peretti-to-shut-down-newsroom.html http://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-pushe..." on this server.