Earlier this year, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy became one of the largest shareholders in digital media entity BuzzFeed when he purchased more than 8% of the company. He believes he’s filling a need by attempting to improve the site.
During an appearance on the SiriusXM show Mediaite’s Press Club, Ramaswamy was asked about what he believes the core mission of a revamped BuzzFeed could be. He shared that his reasoning for investing in the company was due to what he viewed as “gaps” in the digital and news media marketplace.
“You have a lot of media companies that are publishers, not content platforms, but publishers that apply content quality filters. But with that comes an ideological filter. I think there’s a wide-open gap in the marketplace right now for a media publisher that at once, yes, applies that content quality filter, but at the same time does so without an ideological filter. And I’m not just talking about in the realm of news and politics, but culture, sports, economy, business, politics, all of it,” Ramaswamy said.
“I see an opportunity to also fill a gap that many Americans I believe are hungry for, which is the open exchange of ideas. You don’t really see that either on the right or on the left in the realm of political or news media. But I think you see even less of it in other areas of media as well.”
He continued by noting that he believes the brand could be a powerful one if utilized correctly.
“My vision, even if we take BuzzFeed to one side, for the existence of the media company that’s missing today, is one where you have distinctive, high-quality voices, but with actually diverse ranges of views interacting with each other and platformed by a common brand … I just don’t see that existing in the media landscape today, and the country would be better off for it. But because of that, for that very reason, I think the demand for it exists. I think the business case would be very strong as well, to build a distinctive brand around that.”
