Edit: Ok so if I'm going to be cynical I like to at least be right about things. It has been pointed out that I am, in fact, wrong. So here is my best attempt at breaking out the series of events.
Expensive, Pulitzer prize finalist journalists, a part of BuzzFeed News (BFN) are cut.
BuzzFeed (BF) contributors rightfully lament the loss of their co-workers.
The internet, including me apparently, reads about this from a variety of sources and most of us reach the wrong conclusion about who is who.
Since people jumped to the wrong conclusion about who is who and what actually happened people now spamming the more reputable side of BuzzFeed, who were laid off, with "learn to code"
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I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand I'm pretty confident there were at least a few legitimate journalists let go in the recent wave but boy oh boy is is hard to have sympathy for the content farmers that got the cut.
> Last week, more than 1,000 jobs were eliminated at publishers including BuzzFeed and Verizon-owned Yahoo/AOL.
I'm trying to think of the last time I intentionally sought out and consumed content from either of those two outlets. It's unfortunate that they were let go but I'm consistently surprised that BuzzFeed hasn't imploded already. But this isn't an article lamenting fellow journalists and their struggles. It's about:
> The Meme Attacking Media
And that's where I call bullshit. Is this an attack? No idea, debate away. If it's 4Chan screwing around...eh maybe, I guess? I'm more inclined to believe this is people on this internet punching down at people who are now in bad circumstances. Someone found a more effective way to punch and it took off.
The thing that I call issue with is that this is "the media". Following some of the link chains we can see that:
> In 2018, Vox, Vanity Fair, Vice, GQ, Vogue, Teen Vogue, the New York Daily News, Good Media Group, Glamour, The Outline, Refinery29, and CNN experienced layoffs
Depending on politics and specific interests some will see outlets they care about in that list, some won't. But it seems like people aren't talking about the reporters laid off from Vanity Fair, The New York Daily News, or CNN. No we're getting BuzzFeed spam that have managed to turn their own demise into more bloody BuzzFeed spam. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or really mad.
Agreed. Attacking Buzzfeed is easy as a "content farm" but the teams let go were primarily in the national security / politics teams, not the teams creating the stupid (but entertaining for many) top 10 listicles.
Seeing you across this thread as someone who doesn't just dismiss journalism! I'm looking forward to seeing what The Markup [1] comes out with on the data-driven tech-focused journalism front. Saw their managing editor talk last week and I'm tentatively hopeful...
I may very well be and thank you for pointing that out. I honestly couldn't tell you the difference between those organizations without something like that link. But was it "BuzzFeed News" that got the layoffs or just "BuzzFeed"?
I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people who could separate BuzzFeed from BuzzFeed News. Hell I'm actively looking for those distinctions now and it's more confusing than I would have expected.
Looks like it was explicitly BuzzFeed News. It was in the article. And Pulitzer seemed to make the distinction, so I'll take their word for it. I'm not otherwise qualified.
Expensive, Pulitzer prize finalist journalists, a part of BuzzFeed News (BFN) are cut.
BuzzFeed (BF) contributors rightfully lament the loss of their co-workers.
The internet, including me apparently, reads about this from a variety of sources and most of us reach the wrong conclusion about who is who.
Since people jumped to the wrong conclusion about who is who and what actually happened people now spamming the more reputable side of BuzzFeed, who were laid off, with "learn to code"
-----
I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand I'm pretty confident there were at least a few legitimate journalists let go in the recent wave but boy oh boy is is hard to have sympathy for the content farmers that got the cut.
> Last week, more than 1,000 jobs were eliminated at publishers including BuzzFeed and Verizon-owned Yahoo/AOL.
I'm trying to think of the last time I intentionally sought out and consumed content from either of those two outlets. It's unfortunate that they were let go but I'm consistently surprised that BuzzFeed hasn't imploded already. But this isn't an article lamenting fellow journalists and their struggles. It's about:
> The Meme Attacking Media
And that's where I call bullshit. Is this an attack? No idea, debate away. If it's 4Chan screwing around...eh maybe, I guess? I'm more inclined to believe this is people on this internet punching down at people who are now in bad circumstances. Someone found a more effective way to punch and it took off.
The thing that I call issue with is that this is "the media". Following some of the link chains we can see that:
> In 2018, Vox, Vanity Fair, Vice, GQ, Vogue, Teen Vogue, the New York Daily News, Good Media Group, Glamour, The Outline, Refinery29, and CNN experienced layoffs
Depending on politics and specific interests some will see outlets they care about in that list, some won't. But it seems like people aren't talking about the reporters laid off from Vanity Fair, The New York Daily News, or CNN. No we're getting BuzzFeed spam that have managed to turn their own demise into more bloody BuzzFeed spam. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or really mad.