Towards the end of Traffic, an account of the early years of internet publishing, Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, writes that the site’s failings had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”.
No truer words, perhaps, for a business that, for a decade, paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a fundamental business requirement.
A pioneer of the internet news business, BuzzFeed News, which walked away with a Pulitzer prize for international reporting in 2021, said it was shutting down on 20 April after shares in the company had tumbled 90% since it went public. Jonah Peretti, the chief executive, said the company could “no longer continue to fund”…