No, New York Times, BuzzFeed Layoffs Aren't a "Democratic Emergency"​: They're a Renewed Call to Act

No, New York Times, BuzzFeed Layoffs Aren't a "Democratic Emergency"​: They're a Renewed Call to Act

With all due respect to Farhad Manjoo who is an excellent reporter and a fledgling columnist, this piece is, to be kind overstated, and to be a bit more direct, preposterous. First, the creative and business successes at BuzzFeed are notable. This is, after all, a company with revenues of $250 million or so. Many of you reading this could run one heck of a news and information company with that revenue. Ben Smith and his team have done often brilliant journalism, built a huge audience and significantly advanced digital journalism.

Second, the column never seriously addresses the real challenge here which is the financing of new large news ventures, which in many cases has become a futile venture capital exercise. Third, there's a great big world of content distribution and monetization that lies outside the Google/Facebook world. The idea that large investments in giant news sites would create unicorn scale dependent on Google/Facebook goodwill looks ludicrous albeit in hindsight.

And finally, and here's the self-interested part, we are living in a global restructuring of news built on entrepreneurial new ventures some dependent on philanthropy and donations, some built on local merchandising, some on subscriptions and membership and others still on investment that believes success can be measured on something other than massive returns or exits. At the new company our team has put together, The News Project we're building capabilities with partners like WordPress, 10up, Piano.io, Charming Robot and the APNews designed to help propel that revolution by putting great technology and skills into the news future, a future often about small newsrooms producing great stories about communities and important categories. I founded @The-News-Project because the world needs more news, coverage of vital topics and underserved communities, and we're in a position to help news entrepreneurs do just that. If you're operating a news organization today and you're doing so with an outdated platform and outdated inadequate publishing technology, with an ineffective user experience implementation, and an inadequate audience development strategy, The News Project is positioned to help you address these challenges.

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To be sure, if the thousands of small newsrooms around the world aren't over the coming decades smart about their businesses, committed to great journalism and fully engaged with their audiences their work and the workings of democracy may well be threatened. So, while maybe this is the bursting of a bubble, more importantly, it is a call to action. An important executive warned me when the turn of the century Internet 1.0 bubble burst that "This internet thing is over." Well, of course, no it wasn't over. And in the aftermath of too many sobering layoffs and too much private equity greed wrecking too many newspapers, today's "democratic emergency," as the The New York Times put, it while tragic for scores of very capable journalists, only reminds us of the urgency of newsgathering's accelerating restructuring.

Merrill Brown, a business executive, journalist, educator and consultant, most recently served as Founding Director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, a post he held from 2012 until 2017. He was the founding Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com, which became a recognized leader in digital news delivery when it began operations in 1996, and co-founded the Online News Association in 1999. He serves on the Board of GoLocal24.

A former reporter, Wall Street correspondent and Director of Business Development at The Washington Post, Brown was founding Editorial Director of News 21, the national reporting project produced by journalism students and launched by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.

He is the founder of The News Project.