Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson

Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson

Author:Jill Abramson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster


CHAPTER TEN

BUZZFEED III

Ben Smith’s growing news division was costing an arm and a leg. Despite an injection of another $200 million from Comcast/NBC Universal in 2016 to pump up its video arm and produce television-style content, Peretti’s shiny company was still spending more than it was taking in and the go-go growth years appeared to be ending. Almost every competitor, old and new, was competing for the same 18- to 34-year-old demographic.

The biggest problem was the size and greed of the host, Facebook, which was consuming such a large portion of the advertising pie. Also, what was cool and new in 2008 was beginning to fade in 2016. Smith, meanwhile, had built a large investigative team of more than 20 journalists and, under Janine Gibson, whom he recruited from the Guardian, was supporting a big reporting operation in London.

The stories they were breaking, including takeouts on psychiatric hospitals beset by violence, sexual assault at America’s largest massage chain, corruption in professional tennis, and Russian assassinations, had impact. Their stories freed prisoners in Chicago and BuzzFeed’s coverage of sexual assault and sexual harassment at universities was ahead of its traditional competitors and cost several famous professors and medical researchers their jobs. BuzzFeed was a finalist for many of the top reporting prizes.

The financial support system for the journalism was BuzzFeed Motion Pictures in Hollywood, a mini Paramount for online video, created to churn out short series and one-off clips that would go viral on Facebook. But it too cost millions. The 10-year-old BuzzFeed was, in all, a big and expensive operation.

While the Times and the Post both had clear missions—breaking news—BuzzFeed was still primarily not a news organization. Peretti was focused almost totally on the studio. Split apart, the two parts of his company, news and entertainment, were not growing in happy coexistence. Peretti’s answer was to split his company in two and separate news from the far more profitable entertainment. That left Smith and his minions in New York worrying that his news division, the loss leader, would be starved of resources. But Peretti promised to come through with a reasonable budget for the 2016 campaign that would make Smith and BuzzFeed players in the election coverage. In fact BuzzFeed would become a major thorn in the side of the leading Republican contender, Donald Trump, whose made-for-reality-TV persona and campaign trail buffoonery seemed tailor-made for BuzzFeed.

After BuzzFeed added serious news in 2012, its editors applied emotional valence to the headlines and presentation of news articles, even serious investigations BuzzFeed launched under Mark Schoofs. The headlines for investigative projects were A/B-tested. For one of its early investigations from Schoofs’s group, multiple headlines were tested and two different versions of the story, a long one and a summary, were distributed. This was all to optimize the audience on Facebook. The story, which probed how battered women were being treated as criminals, succeeded in getting millions of clicks.

When Facebook adjusted its News Feed to feature more visual content and fewer text-based posts or links in 2011, BuzzFeed quickly followed suit and prioritized the production of images.



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