It was announced yesterday that BuzzFeed News was shuttering after taking the digital media landscape by storm in the early 2010s.
The company made the decision to close the outlet to put more focus on HuffPost. CEO Jonah Peretti told employees the company made a mistake.
“I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much,” Peretti acknowledged. “This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.
“I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns.”
Ben Smith was the first Editor-in-Chief of the digital outlet. He claims he worked diligently to bolster its investigative journalism division during his tenure. He added that the downfall of the organization is the final nail in the coffin between journalistic endeavors and social media platforms.
“I do think it makes really clear the relationship between news publishers and social media is pretty much over,” Smith told CNN’s Oliver Darcy.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about when the tide turned. I have a book coming out in a couple of weeks, called “Traffic”, that tries to tell the story of the era — the rise of a new kind of digital media in the early 2000s in lower Manhattan,” Smith wrote on Semafor. “Much of it is about that turn, between 2015 and 2017, to a darker societal view of social media, to the platforms’ flight from increasingly toxic global politics, and away from the internet BuzzFeed shaped and thrived on.”
Smith departed the digital outlet in 2020 for a position with The New York Times. He ultimately departed the Grey Lady to co-found news startup Semafor with Justin B. Smith.
BuzzFeed News grew to prominence during a time in Facebook’s history when it amplified links to outside sources. As the social media giant grew, changes in its algorithm continually limited the reach of organizations like BuzzFeed News to the point of closure.
After the announcement of BuzzFeed News’ demise, the company’s stock price dropped by 20%.
