Mass Layoffs Hit Leftist News, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed
Mass Layoffs Hit Leftist News Websites, Journalists Fired. Buzzfeed will lose 250+ staff in a massive round of layoffs Huffington Post will lose an unknown number of staff but it could be comparable.It won't end here, leftist news sites have continually felt failure over the past few years with many far left sites and left wing digital publications losing money and laying off staffers. This was all predicted by former VICE CEO Shane Smith years ago.But BUzzfeed has a strategy for survival, cookware. I kid you not Buzzfeed has been selling two different brands of cookware online and in Wal Mart to make ends meet.
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BuzzFeed announced mass layoffs, so did the Huffington Post.
BuzzFeed is looking to lose about 15% of its staff.
We don't know how many people Huffington Post is going to trim down, but their parent company, Verizon, needs to cut 7% of its workforce.
We're at a time of massive distrust in the media.
We just saw a whole bunch of fake news scandals where people just don't think any of this is true or worth buying into at this point.
Why pay for stories from the Washington Post when Twitter users break news faster than they do?
Why bother with BuzzFeed when the Mueller team came out and discredited their major bombshell reporting?
A lot of people make fun of Alex Jones and InfoWars because they peddle supplements, and they say, that's all InfoWars is.
In reality, BuzzFeed isn't too dissimilar.
One of their strategies for survival has been to sell cookware, and not just one brand, two.
Today, I want to talk about the real reason these media companies are failing, and I want to highlight one of their prime strategies for survival, becoming cookware companies.
Seriously.
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From CNN, BuzzFeed to cut 15% of staff in a new round of layoffs.
BuzzFeed is preparing to announce a significant round of layoffs according to sources familiar with the matter.
The coming contraction is the latest example of digital media companies having to make cutbacks in a difficult operating environment.
One of the sources said the layoffs will affect 15% of the company's workforce.
The reductions will involve multiple departments, including the news division.
Staffers have been bracing for bad news for days.
Employees had learned senior editors were being flown into BuzzFeed's New York City offices, and cuts to staff were widely speculated about internally.
BuzzFeed has about 1,450 employees, so about 220 will be leaving, the source has confirmed.
The company has not yet announced the layoff internally, but is expected to do so on Wednesday evening.
That story from CNN is from yesterday, and we have an updated version from the Huffington Post.
Layoffs hit Huffington Post after $4.6 billion Verizon Media write-down.
The cuts are part of sweeping layoffs at Verizon Media, which includes Yahoo and AOL.
This story does reference the latest update from BuzzFeed.
They say, Huffington Post began laying off employees Thursday morning, one day after its parent company, Verizon Media, announced it would cut 7% of its workforce.
This story also includes the latest on the BuzzFeed situation, saying BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced Wednesday that the company would lay off 15% of its workforce, or about 250 people.
And they include this statement from Jonah Preddy.
The story adds that Mike.com laid off the majority of its employees in November.
In October, Refinery29 announced a cut of 40 employees, while Super Deluxe announced that it would shut down.
Adweek called 2018 digital media's great upheaval.
So there it is.
Massive layoffs once again.
They keep coming.
It was a few years ago, I believe it was 2014, or maybe it was 2015, I can't remember, where Shane Smith, the former CEO of Vice, said there was going to be a bloodbath in digital media.
Many people didn't want to believe it.
These companies went around touting how they were the future, they were new, they were going to take over.
But they did one thing very, very wrong.
They didn't grow organically.
For the most part, these companies relied on massive venture capital to try and grow.
The internet incentivized hyper-partisan rage-bait.
So these companies continually chased after a narrative up until they've imploded.
They've now started producing just insane fake news.
Look at what happened with Covington.
Everyone got that wrong.
None of these journalists did any legwork.
There was no reason to.
This is the future of the media landscape.
And I'll point out, it's not like I'm in a drastically different position from them.
I'm in a safer position.
But admittedly, I rely on the work of many of these news organizations to source a lot of videos I produce.
Now, I have been doing a lot of on-the-ground reporting for the most of my career, and in the past year, I've been focusing more on internet research and looking at many of these stories.
A lot of the stories I do when dealing with stories like Covington require me to dig through social media posts, find out what actually happened, watch a lot of videos, and that is journalism.
Commenting on existing stories like this requires these news organizations to exist.
So this will have a ripple effect far and wide, and it's going to be bad for everybody.
But the most important point is that the media environment is being saturated.
There are many more people who have the ability to rise up on their own as individuals, and they don't need these companies.
Right now, my company is flourishing.
I'm expanding and possibly going to launch a third channel.
And I'm just one person.
I'll be working with one other individual.
These companies have massive staff that have required venture capital to survive.
So what do they do?
They pump out ridiculous nonsense articles to chase after some kind of rage bait.
And that's why Covington Catholic happened.
There's no way a media environment can survive with this kind of pressure.
The venture capitalists want to see that turnaround.
We need year-over-year growth.
It's not possible.
The market is being saturated.
So the only thing they can do is hyper-partisan rage-bait.
But eventually that doesn't work, and they leave a hole in the market for centrist opinion.
And that's why we see the rise of Quillette.
That's why my channel does well.
It's why you see the intellectual dark web gaining so much prominence.
But there are other factors involved.
Last September, we saw this story from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Most Americans say they have lost trust in media.
If you don't trust the product you're buying, why would you continue to buy it?
If you don't trust a plumber, why would you hire a plumber?
And if you can't trust any of them, why would you hire any of them?
You're actually more likely to hire some random dude who says, I think I can figure it out because, hey, it's cheaper than going to these trash sites, which claim to be good at it, but then produce garbage, which makes me just look stupid and wrong.
The goal of a media company is to produce factual information and make sure you know what's going on.
Imagine if a plumber came to your house and used ridiculous tools that made no sense, and you watched.
You're like, dude, I'm pretty sure that pliers isn't going to work in this situation.
That's not even a tool.
That's a banana peel.
You'd eventually say, I'm just not going to hire these people.
And that's what we're seeing in media.
There have been many times over the past year where we've seen fake news.
How many stories have come out about Russia that have been dead wrong?
The Intercept produced this huge list of the top 10 times the media was wrong about Russia, but included an additional list of 10 dishonorable mentions.
Twenty stories where the media got it wrong.
If you can't trust them, you're not going to hire them, and they're going to fail.
The latest example, obviously, is Covington Catholic.
And The Atlantic wrote this op-ed, The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story.
I don't want to read through this op-ed, but I want to highlight how this shows us the problem is only getting worse.
People didn't trust the media in September?
Well, now they're really not going to trust the media, especially when you see the next story.
CNN's powers deletes Twitter app after harassment claim over Covington criticism.
Now, this isn't all of the media, but it shows us that staff at CNN, in the face of evidence still refuse to back down and believe they are correct in their false assessment.
The decision by the former Clinton administration official and current USA Today columnist comes after she blamed the Covington High School students for disrespecting an indigenous elder while criticizing some media outlets for playing both sides journalism.
Yes, that's what journalism is supposed to do.
Break down what's going on and tell me the truth.
If CNN's own analysts don't agree with what journalism is supposed to be, why would I bother watching CNN?
But let's talk about BuzzFeed's strategy for survival in this tumultuous time.
First, we have this story from Newsweek.
Alex Jones urges supporters to buy supplements, air filtration gear, storable foods to fight back after his bans.
I highlight this one particular story because many people have mocked Alex Jones for selling supplements on his show.
They say that he's simply a new-age healing huckster, and the whole point of his show is just to sell supplements.
By that logic, I could say the whole point of BuzzFeed is just to sell cookware, not just one brand.
Two, let's take a look at this absolutely epic piece of journalism from BuzzFeed.
This beautiful cookware set makes me feel like a grown-ass adult.
The pots and pans that actually make me want to cook.
They say, we hope you love the products we recommend.
Just so you know, BuzzFeed may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.
Oh, and FYI, prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.
First, I'd like to point out they claim that they may receive compensation.
However, What I think isn't clear enough is that this page is Goodful on BuzzFeed.
It's BuzzFeed's own wellness brand.
And what they're selling isn't just a recommendation, it's literally their Goodful by Macy's collection.
Listed on the Macy's website, it's literally the Goodful brand.
BuzzFeed is selling their own brand of cookware to you.
I'm not saying it's wrong or it's a bad idea.
I actually think it's very clever.
I mean, I sell t-shirts, but that's more of like a general merch thing.
But BuzzFeed has actively decided to sell cookware.
Now, here's the thing.
Goodful is posted online.
You can get it from Macy's.
$214.99, and they're promoting it via a link.
Okay, so maybe they're selling this through their website.
That makes sense.
But they've actually got another strategy here.
They're not just selling cookware on their website.
They actually have their own brand of cookware that sells directly through Walmart.
This story from CNET.
BuzzFeed, Walmart collaborate online of cookware kitchen tools.
The media company will sell more than 90 products at the mega retailer under its Tasty brand.
The same part of the company that produces popular recipe videos.
It's very likely that their business model won't survive.
They're laying tons of people off, so what will be left?
BuzzFeed, Brandon Cookware.
They will literally just be a cookware company.
There's a reason why they smear and slander people like me and others.
It's because they don't like the fact that we're going to live on and we are the next iteration.
It happened too quickly.
CNN got a couple decades.
They're still around.
But, unfortunately for BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, they only lasted about a decade.
And if they don't figure something out, they probably won't make it.
It's very likely that in the future, BuzzFeed's going to be substantially smaller than my channel, than Steven Crowder, than Dave Rubin.
Then, well, obviously PewDiePie, because PewDiePie's bigger than them already.
And it's likely that at some point, someone's going to come and disrupt what I'm doing.
And that's fine.
I recognize that.
I'm not gonna be salty about it.
Personally, I don't think BuzzFeed's salty about it either.
I think BuzzFeed has been one of the more personable companies when it comes to producing the news.
And I know many people don't like them, but I'm gonna say it one more time.
The fact that I can send a direct message to their staff and they respond really very quickly?
Says to me something very important.
There are a lot of people like The Daily Beast, for instance, or Vox, for instance, that don't respond and don't correct.
But BuzzFeed has corrected and responded every single time I've reached out.
And that means a lot, it does.
I don't care if you're biased, I don't care if you're partisan, if you disagree with my opinions, that's fine, so long as you're willing to engage, to help, to be fair.
And I think BuzzFeed has done that, even though they do get stories wrong.
So again, I'm not saying they're the bastion of great journalism.
I'm just saying I'm more willing to trust them because they're willing to engage.
So again, let me know what you think about all of this.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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