71–80 of 86 posts
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I wonder if there was ever a time in history where it was okay to just run a business and make some money.
Can only work if everyone whose money you're using to run the business is OK with it.
IIRC, I was introduced to Vice with their fascinating coverage of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4 (first trip - Shane Smith was banned from the country as a result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCQh1usdzE (second trip years later, where they got in under the guise of a Basketball game) Unfortunately it's been increasingly hit or miss ever since and now their process seems to be along thes…
It's happening in Canada as well. They're just not making enough money. They're making money, but not enough. There's a large drive to produce more with less, and to reboot. Journalism, especially good journalism, is expensive. Expensive to execute, and expensive to produce. And everybody wants it for free now.
IIRC, I was introduced to Vice with their fascinating coverage of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4 (first trip - Shane Smith was banned from the country as a result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCQh1usdzE (second trip years later, where they got in under the guise of a Basketball game) Unfortunately it's been increasingly hit or miss ever since and now their process seems to be along thes…
It's happening in Canada as well. They're just not making enough money. They're making money, but not enough. There's a large drive to produce more with less, and to reboot. Journalism, especially good journalism, is expensive. Expensive to execute, and expensive to produce. And everybody wants it for free now.
I'm willing to pay for it but I know not everybody is. Like, the vast majority of people.
It's very similar to the F2P game space. Nobody wants to pay for games so studios release games which seem to have used the laws of economics to extract the optimal amount of money from people. These games don't seem like good or fun games to me but they do entertain a lot of people.
Same for a lot of these articles. A lot of clickbait and shallow content.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're also falling victim to many of the traps startups do with regard to VC funding. Vice (and Buzzfeed for that matter) are ticking along nicely, generating a profit. But they're not generating enough profit for their investors, so they're forced to jump through cost-cutting hoops that will ultimately be to the detriment of their product.
This happened similarly with "traditional" media in the 90s. Properties got bought up, and owning papers and magazines was a hot item. They were posting large gains yearly, and shareholders were pleased. When those gains started going down, shareholders became not so pleased! Then the company puts pressure on the properties to cut costs and perform better and sell more to keep those gains coming against a downward pr…
The barriers to entry (and republishing) are also a lot lower now. Why sink a bunch of time and resources into a single piece, when another news company could just come along and say "Thanks for doing the work for us!" and republish it for ad revenue with minor edits. Everyone is rushing to be first, which typically results in a first publisher with nearly instant fast-followers. Plus, when news is ubiquitous and free, users have tons of choices to read the story from, so there is always an alternative around the corner.
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your list just show the yearly churn of the news-repost industry (i.e. companies that have zero investigative journalism, needs fresh people to get fresh news sources to repost) vice (not the site) and buzzfeed news (not regular buzzfeed) are a new beatst in the news industry. they sell tailored pieces (pretty much an improved model that wired used to reborn in the 2000s). for example vice got a huge account promotin…
Buzzfeed started with clickbait trash, then hired investigative journalists to do some good journalism and winning awards (two time Pulizer finalist) Now they are cutting people from the low effort side but keeping the investigative journalism intact. It's interesting business model. Produce cheap trash in large volumes to people who consume it and to do little real journalism on side. It really confuses people becau…
Of course, I wish they were only cutting out clickbait trash, but alas the advertisement machine must be fed.
Vice is completely biased and it makes me happy to imagine snarky vice people being laid off. I hope that these layoffs are a sign that the clickbait model of journalism is failing. I would gladly pay for my news if it werent biased . But I haven’t found a news firm that is free of bias, not even the economist is.
I want people to like their jobs... But if the option is have a shit demanding job where you make great content vs a nice comfortable job where you make good/mediocre content and then get laid off.
What's better?
IIRC, I was introduced to Vice with their fascinating coverage of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4 (first trip - Shane Smith was banned from the country as a result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCQh1usdzE (second trip years later, where they got in under the guise of a Basketball game) Unfortunately it's been increasingly hit or miss ever since and now their process seems to be along thes…
It's happening in Canada as well. They're just not making enough money. They're making money, but not enough. There's a large drive to produce more with less, and to reboot. Journalism, especially good journalism, is expensive. Expensive to execute, and expensive to produce. And everybody wants it for free now.
This overlooks the role Google and Facebook play in draining all advertising money from every other industry.
People always wanted their news for free, and it worked just fine before advertising got so concentrated.
Verizon media (aka huffpost, techcrunch and others), Buzzfeed, and now Vice. The beat goes on.
Verizon media (aka huffpost, techcrunch and others), Buzzfeed, and now Vice. The beat goes on.
As far as I can tell, those are all progressive left oriented, what is the situation with conservative media in this sphere, are they also suffering financially ?
It was interesting to note that TWS was largely anti-Trump, ad Red State laid off mostly anti-Trump writers.