About a decade ago, just before the rise of social platforms, a group of independent digital publishers began to stand out in the media market, attracting audiences with innovative, provocative, bold, and entertaining content. These alternatives quickly became full-fledged market disruptors that managed to compete credibly with traditional media institutions. They had that something, the X factor, tone of voice that was completely different and particularly appealing to millennials who had grown tired of mainstream media. As The New York Times writes, media brands like Vice, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, and BuzzFeed started as a kind of blog and then exploded on the internet thanks to social platforms. These new, fresh media brands became experts in storytelling that people love and want to share, with links to their articles ubiquitous on user profiles.
It seemed they were the future of journalism, the progenitors of a new style of storytelling that combines authenticity, facts, and entertainment. Despite a brilliant start, most of these media disruptors were defeated by social platforms, and since they largely relied on advertising revenue, news of mass layoffs and even business closures has been coming from newsrooms in recent months. Gawker, The New York Times reminds us, shut down in 2016, then had a brief comeback, and finally closed its doors in February. Last month, BuzzFeed shut down its news desk and announced new layoffs, while Paper Magazine laid off its entire journalistic and editorial team. The iconic brand Vice is urgently seeking a buyer who could save it from the announced bankruptcy. Media outlets like The Financial Times and CNN are calling their collapse the end of an era. Digital media, they say, must transform or face extinction.
Broken Links
For instance, CNN states that their boom occurred in completely different times. Today, their resources have dried up. Facebook is no longer the fuel for publishers, a source of traffic and revenue. On Twitter, BuzzFeed News built its name because its journalistic team simultaneously published articles and reported news; they were impossible to ignore. But that social platform, since being taken over by Elon Musk, is practically on the brink of collapse. According to CNN, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti took responsibility for the business shutdown in front of employees. He admitted he was too slow, realizing too late that large platforms cannot provide sufficient support for the development of high-quality free journalism tailored specifically for social media.
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The author and one of the editors who founded BuzzFeed Ben Smith was more pessimistic, stating that it is quite clear that the connection between media publishers and social platforms no longer exists; the matter is settled. Although his heart aches for the newsroom where he spent years, CNN notes that he is actually right – the dinosaur lunch among social platforms (Facebook, Twitter) is being eaten by newer players like TikTok, so even media brands that used platforms as their superpower have nothing left to eat. BuzzFeed’s rise and fall, for example, is synchronized with the rise and fall of Facebook. This media brand exploded onto the scene about a decade ago, but as users migrated to other platforms, it too slowly began to lose its luster. It didn’t help that just two years ago it won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. At this moment, its top investigative journalists have been laid off, and the newsroom has been reduced to practically nothing, with the same ambition for global dominance. Although it is currently ‘only’ the BuzzFeed News desk that has been shut down, this does not mean that the entire company, the BuzzFeed brand, has escaped. After the announcement of the shutdown, the stock price plummeted by 20 percent. Investors measure the strength of the entire brand, or company, precisely by the strength of BuzzFeed News because this sub-brand had a quality that similar media brands, like ViralNova or Distractify, could not boast of. Although they became popular for silly quizzes, they invested in serious journalism and, best of all, managed to produce some unforgettable stories (as confirmed by the ‘Pulitzer’).
