‘Like Icarus – now everyone is burnt’: how Vice and BuzzFeed fell to earth
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It was so easy to get people outraged and rage reading, that it skewed news’ business models.
Murdoch was successful in many markets before starting Fox in the US. His formula was to go after the tabloid market with higher quality content (plenty of stories on scandals and beautiful/famous people, some conspiracy theories, and also quality content). Conservative media had been dominating talk radio and there was plenty of conservative media (Heritage Foundation, National Review) for conservative viewpoints before Fox. CNN (via Ted Turner) had shown that cable news could be profitable and Fox/Talk Radio have shown that rage media creates a loyal audience.
It's not that mainstream media is liberal media as often claimed (I find much of establishment media: CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, People, etc. too superficial to be liberal or conservative -- it's just a business that tries to attract the establishment audience which tends to skew liberal). The real issue in my mind is that mainstream media has not been very good at rage media while Fox and Talk Radio have been virtuoso at it. Trump temporarily made it easy for CNN and MSNBC to thrive at rage media (all liberals could agree on their shock about Trump's actions), but without Trump, liberals naturally fall into infighting between progressives and establishment viewpoints (for example, Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton or AOC versus James Carville)
Talk radio and Fox news are highly popular. As I understand it, before he was fired, Tucker Carlson was the most watched news-related show.
I agree that there are popular progressive and left-leaning shows that focus on outrage (John Oliver, Jon Stewart, etc.) but as I understand it, they are not as successful or popular as Fox News and conservative talk radio.
My point was not that conservatives are more outraged than liberals (I suspect that each side sincerely believes that the other sides shows greater outrage). I just meant from a business perspective, it appears to me that the establishment cable news services are struggling to maintain audience loyalty which tells me that they are not as good as conservative media at taking advantage of audience outrage.
It wasn't perfect. Sometimes the kids were clueless. And they had some bad habits, like making the reporters curse gratuitously just to look "authentic". Which then made you wonder how much else was fake, reality-tv stuff. What was happening outside the frame, or when the camera was off? Is this just "news porno"?
(Actually, some of that may have been "New Vice" trying to mimic "Old Vice", around the takeover, "hello fellow kids" style.)
But sometimes, you got a masterpiece from an experienced reporter, like This is What Winning Looks Like. Or you got a kid who was earnestly trying to be a good reporter, and you found yourself rooting for him. Plus, he was bound to find something in his journeys. In fact, he often did.
What was important about it was that it interacted with the world. People went out and recorded things.
Then at some point it changed. No longer did hipster acolytes of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson take cameras abroad. Instead, English majors wrote essays on the Approved Themes from the safety of their offices. Then it became pointless.
I understand that the founder flirted with various kinds of politics, including some on the Right. Now, if Vice were to devolve into Murdochian hysterics, then it would be terrible and worthless. But I do think that that political curiosity made it more interesting. I remember they embedded with the Oath Keepers in a somewhat skeptical but largely sympathetic piece, years before that same group got mixed up in Trumpist/Jan-6 shit. It was a perspective that would have been impossible to get from any other outlet.
Buzzfeed, on the other hand, was always gossipy crap.
Nowadays, you can get a tamer version of some of this from European outlets like DW, or occasionally from Al Jazeera, and somewhat from various semi-anonymous European documentary-makers on YouTube (who occasionally devolve to the worst impulses of a previous generation's National Geographic). But I feel more could easily fit in this niche.
Buzzfeed, yes. Buzzfeed News, no:
> Since its establishment in 2011, it has won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
"New Vice": https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
> A @VICEUK video producer once responded to me: "I don't understand why this is so difficult, all I want to know is if you can do the job" when I brought up the issue of my safety covering sensitive topics in China, and how I'll take the fall while her team leaves unscathed.
> Naomi: Off limits stuff: I don't talk about my relationship status or my sexual orientation. China is China and it's a complex issue that is sometimes dealt with in pragmatic ways- and my focus is on other issues. It's just a lot of trouble here.
> Vice: "LOL. We outed you on an international stage and also went out of our way to get your Patreon banned, buh-bye!"
Hopefully they can regain their conscience and quality.
They owned a bar ... they really didn’t where to put all their money.