It’s change into a well-recognized chorus for journalists: do extra with much less. And within the case of BuzzFeed journalists, it is so much much less.
BuzzFeed’s information division has been repeatedly battered. Buyouts final spring noticed the location’s acclaimed investigations group—in addition to its science, politics, and inequality verticals—gutted. Prime editors, together with the location’s then editor in chief, Mark Schoofs, departed. To make issues worse, towards the tip of 2022, founder and Chief Government Jonah Peretti introduced much more cuts. In line with the Wall Road Journal, BuzzFeed’s roughly 100-person newsroom downsized by about 40 p.c previously yr. All of which made BuzzFeed Information editor Karolina Waclawiak’s current request for extra content material considerably ironic, if not inevitable.
“There are such a lot of issues exterior of our management—the promoting market, the economic system, a recession,” Waclawiak informed employees at a gathering reported by the Journal. “However what we are able to management is what number of tales we publish every day.” Waclawiak reportedly framed her plan to spice up the information division’s quantity and site visitors as a part of an effort to shore up profitability this yr, whereas acknowledging that the newsroom is “a lot smaller than it was once.” (Maybe that knowledgeable Peretti’s choice to embrace AI expertise to create content material, as he introduced earlier this yr.) However Waclawiak assured employees that the newsroom’s elevated publishing quantity “had improved the visibility of its content material on exterior platforms together with Apple Information and NewsBreak, resulting in greater income,” in response to the Journal, which stories that site visitors referrals from Fb, which BuzzFeed beforehand relied on, have been flagging.
Whereas BuzzFeed is much from the one digital media firm grappling with a sluggish promoting market, it is also been coping with a novel slew of different points. For one, the writer’s journalistic ambitions seem dulled: Final yr, because the investigative group was disbanded and others diminished, Peretti mentioned on an earnings name that the corporate was trying to prioritize “protection of the largest information of the day, tradition and leisure, superstar and life on the web.” Waclawiak informed the Journal that a part of BuzzFeed Information’ technique entails “pursuing long-form investigations that may function the premise for documentary initiatives.”
In the meantime, the corporate’s inventory worth continues to battle following its bumpy debut in December 2021, when it went public by way of a SPAC merger however suffered a wave of investor withdrawals earlier than the primary day of buying and selling. On Tuesday, the day after BuzzFeed mentioned it anticipated to generate between $61 and $67 million in income within the first quarter—down from the $91.6 million that it reported for a similar interval final yr—BuzzFeed’s inventory “misplaced 1 / 4 of its worth,” per the Journal, closing at under $1. Final yr’s fourth quarter was additionally rocky, in response to the Hollywood Reporter, which reported that each promoting income and time spent by customers fell by 27 p.c. “There’s no denying that 2022 was a troublesome yr for digital media,” Peretti mentioned in an announcement that accompanied the fourth-quarter earnings. “The challenges we confronted in This autumn are additionally impacting us in Q1 2023, and it’s clear we’ve extra work to do to appreciate the total potential of our mixed model portfolio.”
