Note of clarification since the branding is easy to conflate: "Buzzfeed News" is a part of Buzzfeed, better known for viral/listicle content, but has been its own entity, i.e. the "serious"/indepth news and investigations.
Buzzfeed's purpose was to make money. Buzzfeed News was a semi-successful attempt to take money from advertisers who preferred high minded NYT/WSJ type audiences by gaining the reputation of "no, no, you see Buzzfeed News is the serious part, it actually does good stuff!".
It didn't work because the financial cards are stacked against print media, there is basically NYT and then tech billionaire charity cases like The Post and The Atlantic.
I agree that Buzzfeed should not have gone public. For those of us who are more cynical, we see Buzzfeed News as the reputable veneer on the listicle business. The actual news organization was started 5 years after the listicle business.
"As it turned out, for many former employees, it was all too good to be true. This past Monday, as BuzzFeed went public, many of them learned something alarming: they weren’t able to trade the stock that they had waited years to exercise."
When you have skin in the game it aligns interests.
“As the markets opened on December 6th, former BuzzFeed employees contacted their brokerages to initiate trades, but later found out that the type of stock they held, known as Class B, couldn’t be publicly traded yet. That evening, Continental, a stock-transfer company that BuzzFeed had engaged to facilitate the spac merger, sent an e-mail informing former employees that, in order to trade their Class B shares, they would have to convert them into Class A shares. In order to complete the process—which would take three to five business days—former employees were informed, they would need to print the e-mail, sign, scan, and return it.”.
“An e-mail circulating among former employees this past week raised the question of whether they could have a legal case. “This is rotten and definitely slimey, but I have not figured out if it’s illegal,” a person wrote. When asked whether anything illegal had occurred, Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed, said ‘of course not.’”.
And this only applies to past employees that exercised their options - paying some money and taxes for their equity.
More toxic investors who think the world needs more ads, less investigative journalism. Good to hear that Peretti is pushing back, but somehow I doubt that he'll last if he keeps it up.
Maybe some investors are ok with an organization in a company losing $10M yearly but it doesn't really strike me as toxic for them not to be ok with this.
> More toxic investors who think the world needs more ads, less investigative journalism.
You're talking on Hacker News where people routinely bypass paid content by posting workaround links. The same people who get angry when people stealing their SAAS subscriptions. This is the pot calling the kettle black.
Those ideals died long ago when they took 500M+ of venture capital. Years later, those investors are taking their losses and public market actors can and will force them to make the hard decisions, like cutting the CEO's vanity project. Call it ruthless if you want, but any option post-VC, whether it's PE or public markets, is going to involve a lot less "lighting money on fire" projects. Outside that environment, a company is simply worth the sum of it's discounted future cashflow, with direct monetary incentive to maximize it.
Funny I was using chrome on android the other day and the number of sites with huge ads that obscure content reminds me of popups in the early 2000's. Some mainstream sites are practically unusable. I suppose they've driven their engagement metrics by making a tiny 'close' button that's designed to make you inadvertently click the stupid ad.
I say we draft the ad people to defend Ukraine before we let them back into society on parole.
Talk is cheap if you aren't the one footing the bill. The investors are likely in the top .001% in spending money on investigative journalism, but if they don't spend even more money on it, they get to receive criticism for killing journalism from people who made more lucrative investments.
> “Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” [Peretti said]
This part confuses me. The newsroom is a loss, but buzzfeed as a whole is profitable, got it. But if buzzfeed as a whole is profitable even with the news division in the red, what does it mean to say you "don't have the resources to support another two years of losses"?
> If you don't have the majority youre not the owner but an employee.
By that definition Bezos is (well, was) an Amazon employee. And Musk is Tesla employee.
Zuckerberg owns a minority of shares but a majority of votes, so I don't know where he falls in your calculus. But I disagree with your statement as a whole, so I don't care too much about the line.
the value that is being subsidized by the viral clickbait mess of the regular buzzfeed site, seeing as nobody wants to pays actual money for the "societal value" that you mention
Regardless of thoughts on Thiel, the second link feels like a hit piece —- the entire article hinges on one paragraph “BuzzFeed News can reveal that in at least one instance during the summer of 2016, Thiel hosted a dinner with [white nationalist]… And then Thiel emailed the next day to say how much he’d enjoyed his company.“ How many other people were at the dinner? How many other people received this email? What were the contents of the email, i.e. was it a generic thank you? Left to suspect these details would make the story less interesting
This was easy to see coming. Prestige doesn't matter if you're a public company, all that matters is this quarter's results. Buzzfeed could play that game when their investors were happy that Jonah was incinerating their money, but now that they're public and their SPAC dropped like a rock, anything unprofitable has got to go.
"Prestige" BuzzFeed was always a tainted name there inability to realize how shitty their reputation was and release real news under a different name directly lead to this.
Eh, going public, by itself, doesn't necessarily result in this kind of outcome. There's plenty of public companies that are operating with little in profits or even at a net loss.
Presumably the way this SPAC was structured resulted in a change of control, and if you make that decision, you get what you get.
Investors are the worst possible people to tell you how to create something great. I've never seen a notable public market investor who made the world a better place.
I want to say Carl Icon's push to separate PayPal from eBay was beneficial. Not that PayPal stock has done so well lately, but it's a real company providing a real service now, and overall the calculus is positive
This doesn't really dispute your point though. Rules tend to have an exception or two.
> I've never seen a notable public market investor who made the world a better place.
which isn't their goal.
Investors' goal is to earn the highest return possible on their capital they invest, and take the lowest risk possible they can get away with.
Making the world a better place is something a charity does. Making money is what a company does. If the company incidentally makes the world a better place, that's great, but why does anyone expect this to happen?
Shut it down and move all the employees to contractors, get rid of all benefits, put up a paywall, and only pay the employees when they actually deliver quality material that you can run ads on.
> News doesn't make money unless you're a solo operation out of a basement or behind a paywall with 100+ years of experience under you.
A solo news operation sounds a lot like a OS written by one person. At some point, it takes more labor to build something than one person is capable of.
> OH NO! where will i get TOP 100 CELEBRITY DOGS THAT LOOK LIKE POISONOUS FROGS lists in the future?
Oh don't worry, you'll still get that. In fact, that's all you'll get. Investors know how to sort the wheat from the chaff to provide us with the race to the bottom our society really needs.
[+] [-] danso|4 years ago|reply
Github repo of their open-sourced work: https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews/everything
Previous HN submissions from the domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeednews.com
2021 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/megha-rajagopalan-alison-ki...
[+] [-] slickbot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] supercheetah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kylekramer|4 years ago|reply
It didn't work because the financial cards are stacked against print media, there is basically NYT and then tech billionaire charity cases like The Post and The Atlantic.
[+] [-] barney54|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MangoCoffee|4 years ago|reply
Expensify which featured on HN a few times have been drilling as well since IPO.
[+] [-] mimikatz|4 years ago|reply
"As it turned out, for many former employees, it was all too good to be true. This past Monday, as BuzzFeed went public, many of them learned something alarming: they weren’t able to trade the stock that they had waited years to exercise."
When you have skin in the game it aligns interests.
[+] [-] robocat|4 years ago|reply
“As the markets opened on December 6th, former BuzzFeed employees contacted their brokerages to initiate trades, but later found out that the type of stock they held, known as Class B, couldn’t be publicly traded yet. That evening, Continental, a stock-transfer company that BuzzFeed had engaged to facilitate the spac merger, sent an e-mail informing former employees that, in order to trade their Class B shares, they would have to convert them into Class A shares. In order to complete the process—which would take three to five business days—former employees were informed, they would need to print the e-mail, sign, scan, and return it.”.
“An e-mail circulating among former employees this past week raised the question of whether they could have a legal case. “This is rotten and definitely slimey, but I have not figured out if it’s illegal,” a person wrote. When asked whether anything illegal had occurred, Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed, said ‘of course not.’”.
And this only applies to past employees that exercised their options - paying some money and taxes for their equity.
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simulate-me|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eatonphil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|4 years ago|reply
You're talking on Hacker News where people routinely bypass paid content by posting workaround links. The same people who get angry when people stealing their SAAS subscriptions. This is the pot calling the kettle black.
[+] [-] tyrfing|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t0suj4|4 years ago|reply
It's simply unfortunate branding.
[+] [-] yeetsfromhell|4 years ago|reply
I say we draft the ad people to defend Ukraine before we let them back into society on parole.
[+] [-] Aunche|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|4 years ago|reply
This part confuses me. The newsroom is a loss, but buzzfeed as a whole is profitable, got it. But if buzzfeed as a whole is profitable even with the news division in the red, what does it mean to say you "don't have the resources to support another two years of losses"?
[+] [-] Markoff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaws|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardfey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InCityDreams|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvXi8W9o_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnYVH_Rrp00
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HWR_14|4 years ago|reply
By that definition Bezos is (well, was) an Amazon employee. And Musk is Tesla employee.
Zuckerberg owns a minority of shares but a majority of votes, so I don't know where he falls in your calculus. But I disagree with your statement as a whole, so I don't care too much about the line.
[+] [-] cwkoss|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chii|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhyNotHugo|4 years ago|reply
> You don't have permission to access "http://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-pushe..." on this server.
[+] [-] antattack|4 years ago|reply
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/peter-t...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-d...
[+] [-] okino|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Vaslo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exogeny|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tick_tock_tick|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BaseballPhysics|4 years ago|reply
Presumably the way this SPAC was structured resulted in a change of control, and if you make that decision, you get what you get.
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spoonjim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|4 years ago|reply
This doesn't really dispute your point though. Rules tend to have an exception or two.
[+] [-] chii|4 years ago|reply
which isn't their goal.
Investors' goal is to earn the highest return possible on their capital they invest, and take the lowest risk possible they can get away with.
Making the world a better place is something a charity does. Making money is what a company does. If the company incidentally makes the world a better place, that's great, but why does anyone expect this to happen?
[+] [-] faangiq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamleppert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usednet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nojito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
A solo news operation sounds a lot like a OS written by one person. At some point, it takes more labor to build something than one person is capable of.
[+] [-] wlakjlkjkerg|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] guender|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] briandilley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
Oh don't worry, you'll still get that. In fact, that's all you'll get. Investors know how to sort the wheat from the chaff to provide us with the race to the bottom our society really needs.
[+] [-] Sebguer|4 years ago|reply