Your listicle is not defending democracy, and confusing these two groups has led to a great devaluation of trust in the remaining real journalists.
> Wonder why suddenly quizzes took over your Facebook? That was because of @LouisPeitzman, who made one viral quiz that unleashed everything else (he probably can apologize to you personally for that).
This isn't a layoff of journalists, its a layoff of custodians of low-brow content farm writing. If that's all, then the main problem in the journalism-apocalypse is that these people were called journalists in the first place.
> "A bunch of people were laid off (and more to come! Fuck!) who quite literally created and shaped the internet as we know it today."
I think this what people mean when they talk about Poe's law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law. For a short while I thought I was reading a parody.
> "BuzzFeed changed the internet, for better or worse (if you say worse to me right now please eat my ass)," ... "They gave moral clarity, heart, and a mission that was never craven click-lust, but driven by serious consideration of humans"
It seems the team builders there failed on the moral clarity bit. At least there is more work to be done, but time has run out it seems.
It's interesting to observe how confident they are that they shaped the internet for the better. Something tells this is not an anomaly and most of them share that belief. This is a great example self and group brainwashing. And notice the part where if you disagree with them, you get immediately attacked. Clearly the qualities of a sophisticated investigative journalist, ready to report news in an unbiased and objective manner.
It's also very important to delineate between Buzzfeed the site (which is effectively a trash tabloid the likes of what you are likely to find near the grocery store checkout), and their news org, Buzzfeed News, which is probably at least decent (except for their recent reporting on the Mueller investigation with no evidence) and where the layoffs seem to be happening.
In either case, these are venture capital firms without a working profit model, I think the main Buzzfeed site has resorted to selling cooking ware to capitalize off the popularity of their recipe sections.
Buzzfeed News is a separate org, and to be honest, the sharing of the brand probably does more harm to the new org than good even though its done some respectable reporting in the past.
“It’s time for the ultimate Asian food showdown” (3rd headline)
“Here’s one reason some vegan meals could still be harmful to the environment”
“This trailer for the movie on serial killer ted bundy has raised a lot of eyebrows”
“This guy had the best response after someone said his tinder profile was ‘lame’”
However, took a look at BuzzFeed News and its front page wasn't much better.
I, personally would rather far more facts, research and understanding over emotional rants that give no regard to actual truth in reporting.
This annoys me to no end, but from all websites. The websites are so concerned about being "FIRST!!!!" that their articles are littered with incomplete sentences, incorrect use of words, etc. I'm sure these are articles that are meant to be iterated on to get the final product, where the writer intends to revisit for cleanup or review by an editor. However, it always seems like there is no editor role, or the pointy hair bosses scream for an article to be pushed now, clean up after its online. Or maybe it's like software "let the end users QA for us"?
I just finished re-watching the final season of the The Wire where they spend a lot of time in the newsroom. Of course it's television, but seeing the interaction of the editors trying get the writers to fix issues was pretty glaring in light of online publishing.
But looking at your (short) post history, you seem to be all about one liners and skimming versus reading before making a comment. So I'm likely correct here since I read into it slightly.
I'm highly skeptical of 'new journalism's focus on the emotional reaction people are having to a piece of news rather than context, impact, and analysis. I think that this new style of journalism does not accomplish 'speaking truth to power' and further often serves to amplify voices that reinforce the views of the most powerful. Being a PR-mouthpiece is not noble.
Thus, I think it is harmful to refer to 'new journalism' as journalism because it is quite distinct in both nature and effect, as it blurs the lines between something regressive and something noble.