ALL THE BUZZ THAT FITS

NYT vs BUZZFEED

Happy Tuesday War & Peaceniks. Ready for some buzz‽

How The New York Times and Buzzfeed spent the last decade is a case study, and cautionary tale, for the entire Media Universe.

“The relationship between news publishers and social media is pretty much over.”

- Ben Smith, former founding editor of Buzzfeed News

In 2011, when Buzzfeed, the cool site for internet kidz, started Buzzfeed News, stealing Ben Smith from Politico for their editor in chief, it “inspired tremendous jealousy from the likes of CNN and The New York Times. Flush with venture capital cash, it poached top journalists from establishment outlets, opened bureaus across the world, and touted its ability to send stories viral across the web.”

At the time, by comparison, The New York Times was in total free-fall. As brand new CEO Mark Thompson then put it: “print subscriptions were stagnant, print advertising was in real decline, digital advertising was also declining. And, our one hope, digital subscriptions, was now plateauing — really bad news.”

Back then, Buzzfeed was the rocket ship everyone wanted to be on. Major media like NBCU ($400 million) tripped over themselves to throw cash at them. Buzzfeed even went on to win a Pultizer - once the exclusive domain of “real News" like The Washington Post and The Times.

On the business side, however, CEO Jonah Peretti hooked Buzzfeed’s wagon onto a model of “everything viral on the internet.” His model was to be the firehose that merchandised mass audiences of free traffic, powered by a constant flow of cheap traffic from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Their business was buzz. Their whole strategy was click volume. “Listicles for kids. Hard news for adults. Viral content for errybody - all free!”

As the Grasshoppers at Buzzfeed chased every hot thing on the internet, the Ants at The New York Times went about the long, hard slog of transforming itself from an old school news enterprise built on paper and print, to a multi-faceted content bundle built on a digital hub and spoke flywheel. They didn’t chase Buzzfeed’s disruption, they refused to chase the buzz. While others fell sway to the social platforms, and got high off viral hits, the NY Times took a long look at their own model, and then took a harder path.

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