Not long ago, Vice was winning Peabodys for news while BuzzFeed News was building a first-class investigative reporting unit on the back of viral sensations. Now, they're shutting down. JillAbramson investigates what happened—and what went wrong.
. Bankruptcy may be the only option for Vice because no good bidders have emerged for a takeover. BuzzFeed’s stock, issued during a failed IPO, is virtually worthless.Despite being initially thrown off course during the digital transition, thehad the confidence and will to stick to its core strength—the news—even during years when the company was saddled with heavy debt and shareholder rebellions were brewing.
Neither Vice nor BuzzFeed could have executed this kind of strategy. Vice’s core was always sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and even as it branched into video, dispatching journalists to war zones and global hot spots, its most popular shows were series likethe rapper and road-food gourmand. BuzzFeed’s core was its listicles, quizzes, and light celebrity news, popular but not likely to draw the paying customers needed for attracting and retaining great journalists.
The lesson in all this isn’t that legacy news organizations were destined to win or that digital newcomers failed precisely because they were new. Some digital news organizations, like Politico, are successes and are profitable. Like the, Politico grew from a strong core. It covers politics and policy in a more granular way than anyone.
for its policy-focused Pro subscriptions. Paid conferences and other live events are logical and profitable extensions. Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo, created and run byProPublica, a nonprofit, has a solid core of investigative journalism that has sustained growth and won Pulitzers.
No one should be dancing on the graves of Vice or BuzzFeed News. Competition makes everyone, including thebetter. Journalism, a bedrock of democracy, thrives when different voices and informed audiences make themselves heard. With abysmal public trust numbers, everyone working in news is on shaky ground. Seeing that landscape shrink even further is distressing for journalists—and the public they serve.
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