The world is changing — and so is the news.
For years now, the legacy media has tried to strangle every competitor in the crib. To mega-outlets like CNN and The New York Times — whose credibility is running on the fumes of their once vaunted names — there’s nothing worse than competition.
Conservatives hear most about our own upstart media companies coming under attack from the corporate media. With endless hit pieces, they angle to undermine our legitimacy and all but beg government censors to shut us down. We here at The Daily Caller are no strangers to these tactics and must always be ready if we’re going to keep on bringing you the news.
But digital media competitors, often even more laughably liberal than the legacy press, were perhaps an even bigger threat to the major outlets’ bottom line. For better or worse, left-wing nuthouses like Vice Media and Buzzfeed changed the way the news is distributed and monetized — all while peeling away the ideologically aligned consumers of legacy media. The hysterical embrace of Russiagate, obsessions with race and racism and the overall descent from bias to hyper-partisanship can in part be explained by the legacy media’s desperate attempts to stay relevant (and solvent) in the rapidly changing media ecosystem. Who needs to subscribe to The Times or pay for cable when you can get all the news you need right on your Facebook feed?
So with Vice and Buzzfeed all but collapsing into oblivion recently, it’s unsurprising that CNN took a victory lap. “The digital media revolution is over,” the outlet declared on Friday.
It comes in the wake of Vice’s unanticipated announcement Thursday that it would be laying off hundreds of staffers, who reportedly only found out about the move hours before they were let go. After being acquired by a private equity firm, the company announced the current business model is “no longer cost effective” and that it would “look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model,” according to CNN.
In honor of Vice News and their stellar coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. We hardly knew you. Rest in peace! pic.twitter.com/mgJLlou1y3
— The COVID-19 History Project (@ThisDayinCovid) February 24, 2024
For its part, Buzzfeed closed its news department and has had several tranches of layoffs over the past year. But after offloading a subsidiary at a significant discount, the outlet announced an additional 16% cut to the workforce last week. Only three years ago, it went public at a whopping $1.5 billion.
Digital media may have won some early battles, but legacy outlets are once again winning the war.
“Having once threatened to upend the entire industry and usher in a new era of news distribution and monetization, the former digital media darlings are now merely attempting to survive in any form they can,” CNN’s piece continues. The glee is almost palpable.
The business model once considered the future of the news only a few months ago is now quickly falling apart. It’s a testament to just how fickle the industry can be — here one day, and gone the next. As a privately-owned media company, The Daily Caller is insulated from the worst of it. We’re only answerable to our readers and our loyal Patriots subscribers — not to the caprices of the corporate world. Yet we still must compete in the market.
It’s here where outlets like Buzzfeed and Vice really fail. The Daily Caller strives to cover the issues and stories our readers care about without imposing our own agenda. Vice and Buzzfeed seemingly cater exclusively to their staff’s own sensibilities.
Rest in piss @VICENews pic.twitter.com/3lpZbmMv45
— River (@RiverMonkeycow1) February 25, 2024
With gems like the “6 Reasons You Should Stop Referring To Women As “Females” Right Now” from Buzzfeed or Vice’s take on why “All Masculinity Is Toxic” — it’s no wonder these outlets went under. No one but the most deranged hippie weirdos — who probably don’t even have a computer anyway — care about what “ecosexuals” are or why they’d want to have “sex with the earth.” Normal people don’t wonder “Why Can’t I Consent to Sex with My Brother?” or fantasize about “Ingesting an Animal Through Your Anus.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that an outlet that hires the most depraved, left-wing freaks it can find, and then caters to their own interests, won’t be able to maintain a reader base for long. The same groups that shun or censor conservative news — celebrity influencers, Big Tech, major corporate marketing and investments firms — all had a vested interest in making sure Vice and Buzzfeed worked. Yet despite their own interest in cultish left-wing trends, there’s just no broader market for it.
So for once, we here at The Daily Caller find ourselves in agreement with the legacy media: the world is better off without outlets like Buzzfeed and Vice having a disproportionate impact. Yet their failure offers a glimpse into the uncertain future of digital media. It’s hard to predict how and when, but the media landscape is going to keep changing and we must be ready for it when it does.
The Daily Caller’s award-winning journalism is made possible by our faithful Patriots members, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them. To watch all of our investigative documentaries, and to help support the future of independent media, please consider subscribing.