Do I really need to link stories from Alice Workman, Gina Rushton as well as indigenous reporters. I’ve been pretty well informed by their journalism.
I have no idea what you mean by being spoon-fed food, it just comes off as you being condescending.
Alice Workman’s story on Emma Husar is subject to legal action so I can’t comment on the quality of that. The rest, I’m not disputing. The reporting is often high quality, informative and very engaging. There’s no disagreement on that. Where we seem to have challenges is when I say that good stuff was in the minority compared to the overall volume of content churned out. Most of it was not high quality investigative journalism. You may only have noticed the latter but it doesn’t change the facts.
The remarks about being spoon fed referred to the fact that Buzzfeed is widely well regarded as using social media to serve content up to audiences. You single out reporters (unable to name the Indigenous ones, which I wonder if you’d be able to recall if they were white) who have done fine work. Great. What about the pickle pieces and what not? So compelling
The same is true of literally any news operation - news is expensive enough to produce, you couldn’t run a business if the only content you can run is high quality investigative journalism.
Buzzfeed took a risk and used a platform they developed to expand their content beyond quizzes and memes into a strong news operation, media quality and diversity is weaker with these cuts.
They aren’t, and shouldn’t be someone’s only news source - but if someone reads the pickle article, and then clicks through to a thoughtful piece of investigative journalism, or clicks an ad that helps to fund it - then the pickle has done its job.
That’s no different to how a commercial TV network funds its operations - there’s still high quality investigative journalism on Seven, Nine and Ten - but ACA and stories about saving money on your shopping can sit beside that, helping to fund the wider news operation.
These cuts are an unfortunate loss.
Sorry, my mistake on the indigenous reporters but I was more referring to that group (Allan Clarke previously, Amy McQuire now) as a team and certainly not wanting to minimise their individual efforts.
As for the quality v quantity argument, I’m not sure I see your point. Buzzfeed has almost always been quizzes, tumblr links and twitter best ofs. The good stuff sat alongside but I’m not saying it outnumbered the other material.
Which goes back to my original point of content like that funding the ‘real’ stuff. It’s fun, it’s light and ultimately, clickable.
Every digital news organisation is trying to find a way to stay alive, BuzzFeed’s way to fund its news operation was the quizzes and silly stuff. Newsdotcomdotau does it too but just with different material (oddball world stories, celeb stuff) in place of the “silly stuff”.
The reason they keep doing it? People click on it. Every newsroom has a live stats screen of numbers. Most of us might like to think we’re highbrow but ultimately we’re not. That clickable stuff in theory should be paying for the reputation building, serious news material. The kind of stuff that makes a difference.
Journalism is in a serious, perilous state in this part of the world. News orgs are paying for the mistakes of their editors 25 or so years ago when they all gave away their content for free when online became a rising thing. We should be gutted by these job losses.
I’m not gutted at all. They’ll find other jobs, they’re talented content creators.
Fluff helps subsidise the cost of high quality journalism. I know that. My issue is in all the eulogising that has been ignored, the positive stuff has been disproportionately dolled out to almost cover up the fact that the bulk of the outlet was, and thrived off fluff. Newspapers 20 years ago didn’t have more entertainment pages than they did hard news and primetime tv news bulletins don’t either so I won’t join you in a culture of low expectations regarding quality and composition of online media outlets because they’re different and newer.
The good stuff was good, albeit overtly focused on LGBTIQ, drug legalisation, abortion and Indigenous affairs which just aren’t bread and butter issues for most Australians.
“They’ll find other jobs”.
It’s no walk in the park being a Journalist in Australia, let alone other parts of the world where available positions dwindle and up to 100 people vie for a single job. Take it from someone who has applied to over 1600 jobs: having ‘talent’ is not a instant gateway to success.
20 years ago, newspapers told you what they believed to be the most important news of the day (for better or worse - but it was what they believed to be the most valuable news items of the day). Now, those newsrooms let/are dictated by audiences telling them what the news of the day is. That’s a major issue.
I don’t think you can compare newspapers from 20 years ago and say, we didn’t do it XYZ back then, then transfer it to a digital-first world.
What’s your point? The SMH and The Australian give an inordinate amount of space to boomers whinging about stuff that shouldn’t be important but is made so because they have a platform to air their grievances.
BuzzFeed is aiming their news at a specific market who surprise-surprise are interested and engaged on these issues.
In what field though? There’s no doubt that many will find work in journalism, but it’s an ever shrinking pool with more people trying to swim in it everyday.
Without dropping buzzwords like agile - news delivery has changed dramatically in that time, newspapers went from being the place where pretty much all stories were broken to a place where very few (in comparison to other outlets) are - 24hr availability of news and the lack of longevity in a growing range of coverage has made a large part of the paper somewhat redundant after it’s been printed
I understand that as I actually studied journalism and no longer work as one. Many of the skills are transferable into marketing and communications roles. Go on Seek and do a search around Australia for them.
I know we’re definitely not comparing apples with apples. Data that comes from information being available online is guiding content decision making - no doubt about it. And I don’t have a problem with that, catering to market demand and giving the public information that’s of interest to it isn’t new. My issue, again, is pretending you’re a hard news outfit and neglecting to disclose the fluff is the core of the outlet’s identity.
Clearly not engaged enough for advertisers because if they were then jobs wouldn’t be being cut would they?
Given there were comments from BuzzFeed’s CEO suggesting that revenue diversification wasn’t enough to ensure long term viability - it looks like there are other issues at play (they also participate in VC which can be brutal) That said online advertising is a crowded market with some very dominant players - it’s not a surprise that any online service struggles with ad revenue
Among those to exit the business are Buzzfeed Australia’s editor at large, Jenna Guillaume; social news lead, Brad Esposito; senior reporter, Josh Taylor; lifestyle producer, Michelle Rennex and photo editor, Anna Mendoza. Lifestyle editor Jemima Skelley, and video producer, Nick Arnold, have also announced their exits.
Jemima is the young woman I mentioned at the start of this thread. Both of us are Delta Goodrem fans, and Jemima got to interview the singer three years ago in the Sydney office of Buzzfeed.
So the political journos, the ones reporting on Canberra have retained their jobs?
Alice Workman has been let go.
OK, so it seems like the following people are leaving:
*Simon Crerar (announced on Wednesday)
*Jenna Guillaume
*Brad Esposito
*Josh Taylor
*Michelle Rennex
*Anna Mendoza
*Jemima Skelley
*Nick Arnold
*Jenna Clarke
*Alice Workman
…which means there’s still one more to go, with 11 being the number of staff BuzzFeed is cutting from their Australian operations as part of these worldwide redundancies.
Another legal case settled. Is this an abnormal number for media organisations to face or normal?
Considering every major media outlet has an in-house counsel, not really.
Nine, Fairfax and 2GB all generally have multiple defamation cases running at the same time.
Defamation laws in this country are a joke.
A Buzzfeed spokesperson told Mumbrella the decision to effectively pull out of Australia was for “economic and strategic” reasons so the struggling outfit could focus on “news that hits big in the United States”