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Why BuzzFeed and Vice Couldn’t Make News Work

5 points by baylearn 3y ago

warrenm 3y ago
I think the answer is much simpler: - they basically started as listicle sites - pivoting from silliness to "seriousness" is hard ... and when 'everyone thinks you're a joke' ... they're going to continue to treat you like a joke that ... and they weren't very discriminating as to who/what they allowed to advertise
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  I think it’s even more simple than that. They, like so many other things, were a zero interest rate phenomenon. https://independentspeculator.com/tech-privilege-a-zero-interest-rate-phenomenon https://independentspeculator.com/tech-privilege-a-zero-inte...
  - warrenm 3y ago
    nice double entendre on "zero interest" :)
- dagw 3y ago
  I agree that this is true for BuzzFeed, but it doesn't really ring true for Vice. Vice started off by doing some fairly serious and gonzo reporting on stories no one else was interested in. This got them noticed and some of it got at least begrudgingly taken seriously by more serious journalists. Say what you want, but Vice won real awards for their reporting. Then they more or less gave up on all of that and put all their energy into running a listicle site.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Not sure about Vice, but for me BuzzFeed for news is like talking to Stormy Daniels about virginity. If that's what you're doing, you're confused. There's already an over abundancy of half-assed "news" sources (many them inspired by the BF f-integrity-make-it-viral model). "I'm upset BF News has tanked," said no one ever.
johnny99k 3y ago
They went from dangerous, interesting, and rebellious to the status quo. Which slowly destroyed their competitive advantage. Why would I read Vice when there are 100 other news sites with almost the same content?
fullshark 3y ago
Because they produce digital content, and content is getting commoditized, competing with everything from other news sites, blogposts, message board posts, youtube videos, soon LLM output, you don't want to be in the digital content business. Owning a digital content platform however...

5 points by baylearn 3y ago

I think the answer is much simpler: - they basically started as listicle sites - pivoting from silliness to "seriousness" is hard ... and when 'everyone thinks you're a joke' ... they're going to continue to treat you like a joke that ... and they weren't very discriminating as to who/what they allowed to advertise

Mistletoe 3y ago
I think it’s even more simple than that. They, like so many other things, were a zero interest rate phenomenon. https://independentspeculator.com/tech-privilege-a-zero-interest-rate-phenomenon https://independentspeculator.com/tech-privilege-a-zero-inte...
- warrenm 3y ago
  nice double entendre on "zero interest" :)
dagw 3y ago
I agree that this is true for BuzzFeed, but it doesn't really ring true for Vice. Vice started off by doing some fairly serious and gonzo reporting on stories no one else was interested in. This got them noticed and some of it got at least begrudgingly taken seriously by more serious journalists. Say what you want, but Vice won real awards for their reporting. Then they more or less gave up on all of that and put all their energy into running a listicle site.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Not sure about Vice, but for me BuzzFeed for news is like talking to Stormy Daniels about virginity. If that's what you're doing, you're confused. There's already an over abundancy of half-assed "news" sources (many them inspired by the BF f-integrity-make-it-viral model). "I'm upset BF News has tanked," said no one ever.

johnny99k 3y ago

They went from dangerous, interesting, and rebellious to the status quo. Which slowly destroyed their competitive advantage. Why would I read Vice when there are 100 other news sites with almost the same content?

fullshark 3y ago

Because they produce digital content, and content is getting commoditized, competing with everything from other news sites, blogposts, message board posts, youtube videos, soon LLM output, you don't want to be in the digital content business. Owning a digital content platform however...