News

Buzzfeed sees challenge of making its audience aware it does news as ‘huge opportunity’

Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith sees one of the site’s challenges as making its audience aware it breaks hard news as well as listicles and quizzes.

Smith joined Mumbrella for a hangout yesterday live from the Walkley Storyology conference where he spoke about the perception of Buzzfeed, how he has adapted his personal style for the site, the importance of long form content and his take on the Australian media landscape.

“Part of our challenge  is that we have a huge audience who love Buzzfeed and spend a lot of time on the site and not know we do news,” he said. “We see that as a huge opportunity. People discover you when you tell them a story they want to hear and care about.”

Smith was interviewed after his keynote session at the conference by Mumbrella editor Alex Hayes.

During the hangout he also admitted he still uses ride share app Uber, after exposing the controversy surrounding one of its executives claiming to track the data of a journalist.

Below are the timecodes for topics covered during the hangout:

00.00 – 00.36: Introductions

00.36 –  2.00: How is the journalistic side of Buzzfeed taking off? How are you breaking through the perception of Buzzfeed being memes? “Part of our challenge  is that we have a huge audience who love Buzzfeed and spend a lot of time on the site and not know we do news,” he said.

“We see that as a huge opportunity. People discover you when you tell them a story they want to hear and care about.”

2.00 – 3.08: Alex Hayes quizzes Smith on how more serious content sits alongside some of the more entertainment, fun content. “There’s a discomfort in traditional news of putting different things next to each other,” he said. “I think people who are used to Twitter and Facebook don’t have that particular aesthetic objection. I think it’s very much your preference or not.”

3.08 – 4.37: How has Smith adapted his style to Buzzfeed and trying to attract clicks on more serious content? “Most people love animals and most people want to know what’s going on the world…most people want both,” he said.

“We see stories of having its own audience. “Some political scoop might not be on the front page of BuzzFeed…but will make its way through Twitter and Facebook and get to the people who care about it.”

“We’re not trying to hit the lowest common denominator with every single piece,” he added.

4.37 – 6.25: Is long form content important in getting younger people more engaged with news issues?  Smith said: “I think people always lament how the young have no attention span. I think that’s kind of BS.

“Our experience is some people have very long attention spans on the internet and are very eager to deeply engage in rich, well reported content.”

6.25 – 7.37: Is your trick to really know your audience and pick the topics they’re going to engage in? “We don’t target demographically, we do have a big, young audience but the networks we live on…so naturally there’s a younger audience there,” he said.

“Each story is going to have a different demographic,” he added, suggesting a story about Uber is going to be meaningless for some audiences both young and old.

7.37 – 7.54: You’re still using uber? “I guess so,” said Smith.

7.54 – 8.49: Hayes asks Smith on when Australia can see more investment in terms of longer form content and asks how Buzzfeed is classified here? Smith said Buzzfeed has started but will be investing more in news.

“The duopoly of big news sites leaves a lot of space for readers who are almost sceptical of the setup, there’s a lot of energy in politics here,” he said.

8.49 – 9.34: Is the political debate in Australia something you’ll look to invest in, will you look to bring journalists in who’ve been let go from other outlets or hire people on the fringe? “I think we’ll be looking for aggressive reporters who know how to tell stories on the internet,” Smith said.

9.34 – 10.51: You said aggressive, is this a positioning Buzzfeed needs to take? Smith said it is more about being fearless. Smith also covers the accusations of being more left-leaning in the US.

“There are certain issues, questions of values, we don’t see a real political debate, whether gay people should be allowed to get married, a lot of people don’t see it as a political debate,” Smith said.

“It’s really vibrant and fun,” said Smith.

10.52 – 11.50:What do you make of the australian media? “It’s really vibrant and fun,” said Smith. “Australia has exported a lot of media over the years. There’s a lot of energy here at the moment, it’s a fun time to be doing media here.”

11.50 – 12.40: What’s the most ambitious piece of work you’ve done? “There are a lot of different ways to judge ambition, we’re certainly doing a lot of things you wouldn’t have seen new media do a while ago in terms of investing a year of a reporter’s time in one story,” Smith said.

12.40 – 14.04:  What’s next, where do you innovate now, what gets you excited when you look at the future? “We’re interested in audio and are experimenting with it,” he said. “Buzzfedd videos have been very successful. We’re starting to play around with news videos.”

14.04 -14.34: What are the targets, what are Buzzfeed’s ambition for the next 12 months? “I’m eager to break a lot of news. To get great stories.”

 

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