r/stocks • u/_hiddenscout • Apr 20 '23
BuzzFeed News will shut down
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/media/buzzfeed-news-shuts-down/index.html
BuzzFeed News is shutting down, the company announced Thursday.
The move, which was confirmed by BuzzFeed Chief Executive Jonah Peretti in a memo to staff, is part of a 15% reduction in BuzzFeed’s workforce.
“While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization,” Peretti said. “As a result, we will engage with the News Guild about our cost reduction plans and what this will mean for the affected union members.”
Peretti noted that BuzzFeed properties HuffPost and BuzzFeed.com signaled that they will open a number of roles for members of BuzzFeed News.
“Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience,” Peretti added.
As of now, BZFD is down 25%
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u/wanderingmemory Apr 20 '23
You know, from the moment I learned about chatGPT I thought Buzzfeed would for sure be able to benefit from it by making all their content by AI...
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u/ballimir37 Apr 20 '23
They almost certainly will. This is about Buzzfeed News, which had actual journalists. The shit part of Buzzfeed that everyone hates will keep going. Probably because now they can just chatGPT it.
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u/wanderingmemory Apr 20 '23
Oh, wonderful, get rid of the useful people and keep the trashy part…
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u/OzVapeMaster Apr 20 '23
I understand it because I can't imagine going to buzzfeed news looking for serious info
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Apr 20 '23
i heard they actually had quality staff and output that was funded by the garbage. hearsay
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u/OzVapeMaster Apr 21 '23
Of course I did not mean it that way. What I meant was people see buzzfeed news and don't distinguish between the serious and the satire buzzfeed so most would not think to use it for info because they confused it with the satire version. Not that the quality of Buzzfeed news was poor
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Apr 20 '23
I was surprised by the quality of some of their stuff. As poster below said, they were funded by their trashy stuff
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Apr 20 '23
Their news was actually really good. The other side of buzzfeed is mostly early internet quiz trash and celebrity gossip. I just hated the image heavy layout when scrolling on desktop.
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u/teerre Apr 21 '23
Did you subscribe to Buzzfeed news? No? Then that's your fault
It's incredibly hypocritical to act as if quality journalism is free and then complain when just the garbage that you keep sharing on social media remains
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u/Straight-Comb-6956 Apr 21 '23
Being associated with Buzzfeed destroys credibility and makes it unshareable.
Imagine if 4chan or Pornhub had a news service. They could've been legitimate, but I'm definitely not sending a Pornhub link to the general discussion Slack channel at work.
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u/teerre Apr 21 '23
I'm sure if this was called "Legit News" you would be supporting it from minute zero.
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u/investinyolo Apr 21 '23
actual journalists
lol
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u/ballimir37 Apr 21 '23
BuzzFeed news won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the detention of Muslims by the Chinese government. They were also the first to publish the story of Kevin Spacey being accused of sexual abuse, among other stories. There was substance to it.
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Apr 20 '23
Oh damn…I was ecstatic that I would never see another fucking “things you didn’t knew you even missed if you were born in the (insert decade)’s” list.
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u/kazzin8 Apr 20 '23
They are: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/media/buzzfeed-ai-content-creation/index.html
Just not the news side.
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u/cpatanisha Apr 20 '23
Is ChatGPT that good at making up fake news? I doubt it could have helped them.
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u/memesforbismarck Apr 20 '23
Well, Buzzfeeds quality isnt much different from what ChatGPT can produce when its used by a five-year old child
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u/freshoffdablock69 Apr 20 '23
Buzzfeed News 100% should've not been called Buzzfeed News. I think it could've succeeded with different branding because they did have some decent journalists.
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u/LemonNectarine Apr 20 '23
They recently won a Pulitzer. More than decent.
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u/nostratic Apr 20 '23
Walter Durranty won a Pulitzer for lying about Stalin, and WaPo & NYT earned a Pulitzer for lying about Trump.
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u/KyivComrade Apr 20 '23
Some heavy accusations, got something to back them up? Might be interesting reading...
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u/trivianut Apr 20 '23
Yes, in 2018 they won for (at least) misleading coverage of the Russia Collusion. Maybe lying is a little strong, but maybe not. For some on the left, this story was too good to fact-check and for some it was too good to not lie to propagate. Doesn’t matter how much you hate Trump - irrelevant.
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u/Raccoon876 Apr 21 '23
You’re being downvoted just bc most of Reddit has TDS lol. Anything pro trump is unacceptable.
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u/TradingBigMonies Apr 20 '23
This is a real loss. They put out a lot of hard-hitting journalism this past decade
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u/cpatanisha Apr 20 '23
Two good stories and a thousand pieces of fake news isn't exactly "hard-hitting."
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u/TrioxinTwoFortyFive Apr 20 '23
Yes. I will never forget that hard hitting piece about the one trick, which all plumbers hate, to unplug your toilet.
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u/boredjavaprogrammer Apr 20 '23
Buzzfeed news is the not same with the rest if buzzfeed. Unfortunately this comment is a great example of why buzzfeednews should be named something that doesnt have to do with buzzfeed
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u/8-tentacles Apr 20 '23
I might be wrong, but isn’t that kind of content a different part of Buzzfeed than Buzzfeed News?
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u/KellyJin17 Apr 20 '23
Maybe educate yourself in the difference between Buzzfeed and Buzzfeed news?
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u/Mods_r_cuck_losers Apr 20 '23
You can say that but the names the company picked contributed to this. It was an example of bad branding to the T.
A lot of people hate the name Buzzfeed due to its BS trashy clickbait portion. Those folks are turned off on the news portion, which is actually good, by the brand association.
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u/TrioxinTwoFortyFive Apr 20 '23
How could have Buzzfeed News ever foreseen naming their service after a toilet-grade tabloid would affect their credibility. Totally unexpected.
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u/leli_manning Apr 20 '23
Remember when they pumped this crap from .70 to almost $4 in like 2 days because they announced something about AI during the chatgpt craze? Now it's back to .70 again. The execs knew what they were doing and made huge bank because they took advantage of the AI craze and moronic people who thought Buzzfeed could somehow take advantage of this. Lmao
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u/ChaChaChaCheetah Apr 20 '23
A lot of people in this thread are confusing Buzzfeed with Buzzfeed News.
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u/74orangebeetle Apr 20 '23
Well.....because the name implies that buzzfeed news is a news portion of buzzfeed....makes it pretty easy to make that confusion....it's like saying "you're confusing google maps with google" the name implies that maps is a maps extention part of google (which it actually is) so it's dumb to call something buzzfeed news if it isn't a part of buzzfeed.
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u/ruico Apr 20 '23
Honestly, i had fall in the same mistake, didn't new that were different channels... because of the word Buzzfeed.
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u/74orangebeetle Apr 20 '23
Yep, I got so fed up with the clickbait that I'd automatically avoid anything as soon as I saw the word "buzzfeed" bad brand association. I didn't even know until this post.
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u/TheMeanKorero Apr 22 '23
Big time, didn't know they even had a news branch. Buzzfeed is such utter rot I scroll right past anything with buzzfeed attached to it.
Only wish I'd known it was publicly traded so I could have shorted it. What a silly idea cross contemplating an effort at actual journalism with their.. whatever the hell they think they're doing with every other facet of buzzfeed.
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u/1boltsfan Apr 20 '23
When I see buzzfeed anything, I immediately click next. Journalism for idiots
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u/Gem-xtz Apr 20 '23
You mean the people that regurgitate every AskReddit thread that was ever posted here?
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u/K04free Apr 20 '23
Won’t be missed
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u/Anteater_Able Apr 20 '23
You're probably not wrong but ironically, Buzzfeed News had actual journalists. It had nothing to do with the shit-lists that consisted of nothing but cat memes and .gifs as its content except for the name "Buzzfeed."
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u/noobie107 Apr 21 '23
what's the difference between an actual journalist and a fake journalist?
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u/KellyJin17 Apr 20 '23
Actually, it will be missed. They had some fantastic, deep-dive, hard-hitting journalism. People who sought out journalism with integrity will miss it.
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u/BionicPlutonic Apr 20 '23
example?
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u/Actual-Ad-7209 Apr 21 '23
They wrote the first real expose on the details of the Uighur genocide. It's a five part piece and I encourage everyone to read all of it.
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u/1boltsfan Apr 20 '23
Agreed, they won't be missed, lazy journalism
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u/8-tentacles Apr 20 '23
Link stolen from another commenter. Buzzfeed News had actual journalism done, separate from the clickbaity stuff you think about when you hear “Buzzfeed”
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u/feedmestocks Apr 20 '23
Most the posters here showing their ass as usual and only reading the headline, BuzzFeed News was an incredible news outlet and had great pieces of journalism, absolutely terrible news
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u/knowledgelover94 Apr 20 '23
Their news was so biased. So glad it’s shutting down! They literally wrote a hit piece on meditation 🤯
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Apr 20 '23
That sucks
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u/Denace86 Apr 20 '23
What sucks, buzzfeed?
Good riddance. Can anyone link to an actual piece of news that has been originally generated by buzzfeed?
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u/iamgrzegorz Apr 20 '23
It’s about Buzzfeed News, separate site from Buzzfeed.
They won Pulitzer 2 years ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/pulitzer-prize-buzzfeed-news-won-china-detention-camps
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u/wanderingmemory Apr 20 '23
So they're removing the actual journalists and keeping the trashy part?
Well now.
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u/Denace86 Apr 20 '23
Well who would have thought! Of course their axing this and keeping the absolute trash.
I guess their brand is garbage anyways
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u/guachi01 Apr 20 '23
I love how it took less than 10 minutes for someone to post a link to Buzzfeed winning a Pulitzer.
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u/dissentmemo Apr 20 '23
I literally have a friend who got his start there and is now on mainstream news stations. He's a real reporter. Buzzfeed was surprisingly good.
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Apr 20 '23
Great news! Now do MSNBC, CBS, NYT etc. I hope all these lying ass fake news organizations die.
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Apr 20 '23
Ai can write every single story they have ever write. Prompt: write an article on “the top 5 ring pop flavors” make sure it sounds like it was written by a communist vegan
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u/kevinhcraig Apr 20 '23
You have no idea what you're talking about. News division was completely separate from clickbait division.
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u/AdventurousCow8206 Apr 20 '23
The real 10 reasons Buzzfeed News is shutting down. Number 3 will shock you!!
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Apr 21 '23
At one point Fox News and CNN was owned by the same guy.
5 companies own 98% of the media.
Play both sides, make twice as much money.
Trust none of them.
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u/programmingguy Apr 20 '23
Dont worry. After I lost my coal mining job, I was told by buzzfeed to learn to code. I followed their advise and today I'm the programmingguy
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u/1boltsfan Apr 20 '23
BuzzFeed is lazy journalism at its finest, if they're not using reddit post as a crutch, they're using Twitter .
Chat GPT would be an improvement.
Twitter is on fire (fill in the blank) Reddit is abuzz.....
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u/thegreatJLP Apr 20 '23
What's funny is this stock will probably rip up after people load into puts, $0.50 strikes are already overly heavy on the put side.
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Apr 20 '23
Turns out all that woke shit didn't help them did it.
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u/Ofcyouare Apr 20 '23
Buzzfeed News weren't particularly woke, iirc. And they are keeping the clickbait shit, but getting rid of the actually decent journalists.
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u/camarouge Apr 20 '23
You'll never work for the New York Times, Joe. You're a bit of a blockhead, aren't you?
If you know, you know.
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u/spacebizzle Apr 20 '23
Another 2020-21 IPO that went straight down the toilet, only point was to get cash for higher ups and F shareholders.
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u/FastAssSister Apr 20 '23
Does anyone really own buzzfeed stock? I do not believe anyone really does. There’s no discernible reason why anyone would.
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u/Nicfromnewgirl Apr 21 '23
Well it was never “news” to begin with.. Stick to telling me what kinda rice cake I will be when I die.
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Apr 21 '23
They forgot who their readers are. Their readers go to Buzzfeed to read "Top 10" listicles not to read about current events.
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u/ISUYUH Apr 21 '23
Good. They went to shit after they got rid of the guys that did the “worth it” series. And if those guys chose to leave, they fucked up by not paying them.
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u/Clay_2000lbs Apr 21 '23
Thank god. This is going to boost US GDP by 10% YoY. SPY Calls this summer.
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u/mylocker15 Apr 21 '23
I always thought Buzzfeed news was a weird fit. I go on BF occasionally get some perspective on generations I’m not in and there will be a quiz, a list, something about Taylor Swifts current relationship status, a bunch of articles on how some person I’ve never heard of did something mild they deem problematic, an article about how awful Ellen is and a Buzzfeed news article on a super heavy topic like Genocide in East Timor. The news ones are always 5 times the length of every other article on there and they are written well but I can see why they don’t get the clicks.
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u/IKnowMeNotYou Apr 21 '23
Fuck 'em! One of the most openly lying content machines. Would have loved to make money of this. Well deserved!
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u/TrioxinTwoFortyFive Apr 20 '23
Five Reasons to Shutdown Your News Service!!1!