- Digital Media Products, Strategy and Innovation by Kevin Anderson
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- Will BuzzFeed’s newsroom survive its decision to take the company public? PLUS a post-mortem for CNN+ (one of many)
Will BuzzFeed’s newsroom survive its decision to take the company public? PLUS a post-mortem for CNN+ (one of many)
BuzzFeed is trading at roughly half of what its value was when it launched on the stock market through a SPAC, which was all the rage a year or two ago. CEO Jonah Peretti promised investors a half billion dollars in revenue, but the company has struggled, announcing only $398 m in revenue last year. Investors have been putting pressure on Peretti for the company to ditch news and focus on the viral hits that made it a money spinner. Journalists there are obviously nervous. Think back to the middle of the last decade and VC funding was all the rage in media circles, and with consolidation moving from legacy media to digital media, market pressure is building.
Speaking of pressure building, CNN+ didn’t last long. The cable news network blew hundreds of millions on a product that struggled to attract an audience. Wow, 450 new hires for CNN+ with some pretty big names including Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News, and Audie Cornish who left NPR to join the streaming news network. The thing that jumped out at me was how reporting before the launch talked about how the DTC channel would be positioned in such as a way as not to cannibalise CNN’s cable audience. That sounds like the strategies of so many newspapers that always developed products with an eye of not threatening their legacy cow.
Local journalism continues to be a fascinating space to watch. A US study found an immediate drop in content when large companies took over a newspaper. A lot of people thought this was the case, but now we have data.
And speaking of an interesting data point, the Press Gazette in the UK is reporting how most digital traffic for major regional (local for US readers) news groups is not local. That has interesting ramifications for their advertising businesses.
PLUS Meta releases a playbook for how local brands can engage online groups. AI content and headline personalisation company Mutiny has raised an eye-popping $50m. Acquisitions in regional Canadian digital media. Streaming stocks hit by Netflix stumble. And TikTok is driving UK book sales.
CNN, Plus or Minus: The news network’s new streaming platform is dead, and that’s okay | Nieman Journalism Lab — www.niemanlab.org
It wasn't hard to see this day coming on the day CNN+ was announced. It didn't take blowing hundreds of millions of dollars to figure it out.
More digital media companies want to go public. Can their newsrooms survive? | Nieman Journalism Lab — www.niemanlab.org
"Investors can’t force me to cut news, and the union can’t force me to subsidize news," BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an email to employees.
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"What was so shocking to me is that all the acquisitions led to staffing changes almost immediately and an almost immediate drop in content."
Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.
Mutiny, which personalizes website copy and headlines using AI, raises $50M – TechCrunch — techcrunch.com
Mutiny, which leverages an AI platform and OpenAI's GPT-3 to personalize website content, has raised $50 million at a $600 million valuation.
Today we are very excited to share our news that The Coast has been acquired by the Overstory Media Group. Since we founded The Coast...
Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery see their share prices sink after Netflix’s disappointing subscriber numbers.
The social media platform was a surprise driver for new and older books as sales rose 5% for print and digital