Digital Natives, Once So Bright, Look Upon The Stars In Fright

Michael Hedges May 18, 2020 Follow on Twitter

A white dwarf is a star nearly out of fuel. They were once red giants. Black holes are fonts of anti-matter, devouring anything it their path. Red giants are big tasty gas balls. Black holes suck them dry, so to speak, until they dwindle into white dwarfs. The black hole always wins and the white dwarf ends as a stellar corpse. So it seems is the destiny of the digital native.

Digital native BuzzFeed, famous in its brief tenure, is ending its global ambition. Soon to be gone are its UK and Australian news operations, reported the BBC (May 13). The German office was placed on a ventilator in April, pending sale. French and Spanish outlets are already gone.

While BuzzFeed News UK and Australia are directly affected, the softer, entertainment oriented BuzzFeed site will continue supported. “We are going to focus on news that hits big in the United States during this difficult period,” said a spokesperson. The reference to “difficult period” is purely financial, with side orders of advertising evaporation and pandemic. Two months ago, there were pay cuts.

BuzzFeed News was formed by BuzzFeed in 2011, aimed at investigations, often related to social issues. US cable operator Comcast, through the NBCUniversal subsidiary, invested US$200 million in March after US$200 million strategic investment in 2015. NBCUniversal also made similar investments in Vox Media, which publishes other digital native portals aimed at 18 to 34 year olds.

It was the BuzzFeed News UK crew that was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism in 2017 and 2018. Always in tenuous financial straits, the digital dreams were thereafter plunged into reverse. In 2019 there were 15% staff cuts. BuzzFeed “was brought down by Google and Facebook,” said Press Gazette (UK) (May 14).

Last week, Vice Media Group announced a staff downsizing, about 5% of its total workforce, two-thirds of which will come from international operations, reported Variety (May 15). In March the company implemented pay cuts plus an end to promotions and certain employee retirement contributions. “We do not understand why Vice chose to lay off many of our colleagues in the middle of a global pandemic instead of exhausting all options to save these jobs,” said a statement from Vice Union, which represents editorial workers.

“The squeeze is becoming a choke hold,” said chief executive Nancy Dubuc in an email to staff. “Platforms are not just taking a larger slice of the pie, but almost the whole pie.” Ms Dubuc arrived from A&E Networks in 2018 not long after the ink dried on The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of the 21st Century Fox share in A&E, which added to the Disney stake in Vice Media.

Vice Media is larger and more diversified than BuzzFeed. The company is also about ten years older. There are several portals, including Vice News, TV channels, including Vice News, documentary productions and a native advertising agency. Vice News won a Peabody Award for public service journalism in 2018 for a revealing documentary about the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist neo-Nazi rally that resulted in one person’s death.

Business portal Quartz chief executive Zach Seward told staff in an email (May 15) that he will take a 50% salary cut for the rest of this year. Eighty of 188 jobs will also be shed along with office closings in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and Washington DC. Revenues have been hit as advertisers “have been putting restraints” on spending.

Quartz was sold to Japanese financial information supplier Uzabase about two years ago by Atlantic Media. Uzabase indicated in a regulatory filing it is to “accelerate efforts to reorganize Quartz’s business and to eliminate any potential future risks at an early stage, which will involve a shift towards a leaner structure through a fundamental business reform focused on restructuring the advertising business.” The dream of an international footprint in digital news left to legacy news brands and, of course, Facebook and Google.

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