OMG! It's sad to see another media player go down. I used to read BuzzFeed News on a weekly basis but gradually lost interest. As you pointed out quality had decreased over time... It's also very likely their audience became older and moved on to other outlets.
Probably part of it overall. News was always an outlier to BF’s core business. The dynamic of audience decay likely affected the core business, along with the declines in Fb traffic and not much money materializing from platforms, and made the news subsidies untenable.
What's unsettling -- as online news and engagement have become essential to our lives -- is how difficult it has become for any journalism associated organization to thrive financially. While I'm excited by what Substack has brought us as a new content news--biz model, I'm wary about it's future. Nothing innovative in the content world seems to be doing well.
When I see media outlets without enough direct traffic, I roll my eyes because it's obvious that won't be sustainable. BuzzFeed let go of 15% and (business) Insider 10%, for BuzzFeed this is probably the beginning of the end.
OMG! It's sad to see another media player go down. I used to read BuzzFeed News on a weekly basis but gradually lost interest. As you pointed out quality had decreased over time... It's also very likely their audience became older and moved on to other outlets.
Probably part of it overall. News was always an outlier to BF’s core business. The dynamic of audience decay likely affected the core business, along with the declines in Fb traffic and not much money materializing from platforms, and made the news subsidies untenable.
What's unsettling -- as online news and engagement have become essential to our lives -- is how difficult it has become for any journalism associated organization to thrive financially. While I'm excited by what Substack has brought us as a new content news--biz model, I'm wary about it's future. Nothing innovative in the content world seems to be doing well.
Great episode/edition, Brian!
Thanks, Steve
When I see media outlets without enough direct traffic, I roll my eyes because it's obvious that won't be sustainable. BuzzFeed let go of 15% and (business) Insider 10%, for BuzzFeed this is probably the beginning of the end.