Buzz cut: What we can all learn from Buzzfeed’s global round of redundancies
Corporate advisor and investor Jason Rose asks whether Buzzfeed’s woes could have been predicted, and what it all means for the future of journalism.
It was disappointing to read recently that the Australian arm of Buzzfeed was not going to be spared from the company’s planned global cost-cutting and restructuring program. The decision to slash the company’s global workforce by 15% resulted in 11 local employees being axed – most of whom worked in the newsroom.
In an era in which traditional media companies have seen their business models up-ended by technological disruption, it seemed as though innovative companies like Buzzfeed, Vice, HuffPost and others had finally decoded how news and journalism could become economically viable in today’s world of social media-obsessed millennials.
This was particularly good news for journalists who have seen news rooms being hollowed out for years.
I think the most alarming-slash-ludicrous thing from the announcement globally was this extract from a Digiday piece:
“To make up for some of the loss in manpower, BuzzFeed will lean more heavily on unpaid contributors and editorial fellows to make quizzes, sources said”
Bloody hell.
https://digiday.com/media/dented-layoffs-buzzfeed-charts-path-sustainable-business/
This says its all : “…most of the community is receiving updates from friends and family and fake news at a time when the world needs quality journalism more than ever.”
One day we will all wake up, sick of seeing our mates posturing around on social and wondering if the news is telling us the truth and all cause we didn’t treasure real journalistic integrity when it was here!
To quote Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
BuzzFeed Australia axes 11 staff – shock horror! The traditional media – print and broadcasting – that still breaks the news that matters has ditched hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists over the last decade. While no one likes to see jobs lost the hard reality is that BuzzFeed Australia breaks next to no news of any importance while aiming itself squarely at millennials who want their idealistic inclinations met as long as plenty of celeb gossip and fun quizzes are thrown in. Maybe the kids should switch over to the Guardian once they can cope with reading anything more than a hundred words in length.
Dude you’ve missed the point entirely. The reason this is a big deal is because it signals a move by Buzzfeed back towards what you describe above, instead of the actual news focus they had been pursuing in recent years – Buzzfeed News has won top awards in journalism both internationally (including two Pulitzers) and here in Australia.The jobs being cut in Aus are almost entirely from the news team, who are some of the best young journalists in the country right now.
Nice job commenting on something you clearly know nothing about.
You can read both The Guardian and Buzzfeed – it’s not mutually exclusive.
Zumabeach, you are an intellectual. Excellent synthesis (In fact, almost Hegelian).
‘ …aiming itself squarely at millennials who want their idealistic inclinations met as long as plenty of celeb gossip and fun quizzes are thrown in.’
As a non-sequitur but germane to the dolorous commentary all too common among marketing folk, Handyman David, who came to my place the other day, I worked out, is making around $1,000 a day, much of it in cash.
$250k a year.
Satisfying work, no-uni quals, plenty of fresh air, no boss, works his own hours, and doing something useful.
But I will yield to the proposition that this, in the scheme of things, is a slight digression.
Pah, nothing a Beyonce listicle and accompanying selection of GIFs can’t set right.
‘Leftie journalism not profitable’ is the next satire piece by the Betoota Advocate me thinks