Social media companies born on the web sneered at the old media groups with their dirty print costs, and offered a link to younger readers who no longer read papers or watched TV. BuzzFeed, meanwhile, founded by a liberal Californian, wanted to be the New York Times of the web with a sideline in cat videos.īoth were fed by the idea that audience reach was all, and that digital advertising would be enough to pay for all the content being consumed by a generation groomed on the need for constant updates, or “hot takes” as Peretti called them. Remind yourself how different they were: Vice, spawned from a punk magazine until the internet gave it global reach, sent a basketball star to meet the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. What went wrong was not just a worsening economic climate, hubris and mismanagement, but also a payment system in which these two very different digital media darlings were set up to fail. Prizes and awards did not stop BuzzFeed struggling to make enough money. Vice burned through all the money investors splashed on it and still had so much outstanding debt – $834m – that rising interest rates made its future unsustainable. The reason for these sudden declines, occurring almost in tandem, is relatively simple, albeit still heartbreaking for all those who now face unemployment. Vice, valued at nearly $6bn soon after Murdoch invested, is expected to be bought for about $225m by its remaining lenders. Both digital media companies – once hailed as the future for news – are now worth a fraction of their one-time highs. But now everyone is thinking about what Vice Media and BuzzFeed are worth earlier this week Vice filed for bankruptcy protection, just a few weeks after BuzzFeed closed a news operation that once sought to rival the biggest names in news.
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