
McClatchy Follows BuzzFeed, Vice, and Others in Cutting Staff - creaghpatr
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/mcclatchy-follows-buzzfeed-vice-and-others-in-cutting-staff-11070151
======
sremani
In the wise words of Martin Shkreli, who sounds even wiser from jail..

The web media layoffs remind us that there is no money in virtue signaling.
Major media will get back to real news. The ‘fakeout’ caused by companies like
Vice and Buzzfeed will retract and the CBS/ABC/NBCs of the world will realize
‘woke’ culture and uber-progressivism won’t pay the bills. People want the
news, not preaching. Companies like Buzzfeed (hungry for a merger) are still
upside down on cost structure and will go bankrupt. Startups, such as Gawker’s
latest iteration, actually have a risk of imploding on their own smug, before
they prove they’re not viable businesses, either. More 20-somethings will
realize that their calling of ‘speaking truth to power’ (by trying to usurp
power itself) is a distant second to operating profit. No operating profit, no
whining about the benefits of socialism, sorry.

reference:
[http://martinshkreli.com/uncategorized/1-26-2019/](http://martinshkreli.com/uncategorized/1-26-2019/)

~~~
shard972
Why is this being down voted? Do people think that unbiased news is a bad
thing or something? That these news outlets should have progressive
convictions in everything they make?

Sure they can exist, but they shouldn't occupy the entire mainstream landscape
unless the entire population is on board with those convictions.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Because it's a pointless comment. Fox "News" is the leading provider of
television news in the United States by a wide margin. They have a widely
conservative bent and one of their anchors has nightly talks with the
President.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-
networ...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-network-
viewership-usa/)

The claim that news can be unbiased is silly as all news has to be reported
through a lens. The claim that news media has a "liberal bias" is a long
standing conservative talking point going back to the 1970s where news media
was listed as slightly liberal and then everyone ignored the follow that
showed that media had self corrected based on the report.

Claiming that there's a "liberal news problem" just points out that
conservatives don't like that "their President" is getting "unfairly attacked"
by the media. This completely ignores that conservative media frequently runs
literal conspiracy theories that have led to real life shootings with little
regard to the outcome.

The point being that claiming that there's some grand liberal conspiracy
ignores the fact that most of the news organizations OP cited will actually
issue corrections. Fox news rarely issues them and most other mainstream
conservative commentators never do because they claim they are "infotainment".

------
sct202
For so many news/media companies to be cutting all at the same time, I wonder
if they're all having issues with earning enough ad revenue all of a sudden?
Maybe the high spenders like Squarespace, BlueApron, and MailChimp are pulling
back ad spend?

~~~
75dvtwin
without re-iterating my views about the political affiliation of these outfit.
Just seeing the timing of it, all at the same time, is indeed suspicious.

Another posted suggested that they have hired at disproportionally large
numbers. Seems like a plausible explanation, if true.

May be it related to some political changes.

Or, may be, there is an unseen 'consolidation' that will commence (layoffs in
tech industry, often precedes takeovers).

Just speculating, though.

I definitely feel, that people will _not_ pay for opinion pieces, but will pay
for investigative journalism.

However, investigative journalism, in my view, lacks economic model.

It is quite resource intensive, but there is no 'story origination fee' of
some sort. So it has to live of donations, which could make it very biased.

~~~
ummonk
That is certainly how I feel. There are a lot of good free bloggers out there
that have better opinion pieces than those in the establishment media, and
there is no way I’m going to pay for the latter. At the same time, I greatly
value the media’s role in investigative journalism and wish I could support
outlets / journalists that break important quality investigative news, but
there really isn’t a good way to do that.

I think video functions as a much better format for investigative reporting
though - it is much more engaging, slightly more trustworthy (because you
don’t have to e.g. trust the journalist’s description of tone / body language,
although selective editing can still be done), and harder for other media
outlets that haven’t done the investigative legwork to just copy and
redistribute.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While I didn't downvote you, one could certainly make the argument that "how
you feel" is, well, maybe a little...idiosyncratic and perhaps not that well-
informed?

First: I'm sure there are "good free bloggers" out there, but there's far, far
fewer that aren't associated with new media companies now than there were a
decade ago. Making money as an independent blogger is _exceedingly_ difficult
in 2019 in a way that just wasn't as true in 2009.

Second: McClatchy, BuzzFeed, and Vice are all known for investigative
journalism, not opinion pieces. McClatchy was once considered one of the best
newspaper companies in the business, primarily based on investigative work;
while Vice and BuzzFeed certainly are known for clickbait material, they've
both been funding serious news stories for years. "Free bloggers" just aren't
competition in this space.

Third: You know that BuzzFeed in particular is in the straits that they're in
because they _tried_ to pivot to video, right? Mashable is nearly out of
business because of their attempt to do so. Also, investigative journalism
tends to rely on, well, investigation, not "descriptions of tone and body
language."

Fourth: there is, in fact, a really good way to support investigative
journalism. It's--you know what I'm going to say, right?--paying for it. It
turns out that an awful lot of newspapers, magazines, and journalism web sites
have mechanisms set up that enable you to give them money, often on a
recurring basis!

------
AzzieElbab
It may sound harsh, but IMHO these outlets are highly redundant, from quality
of journalism to political stands. Just the same news retold the same way to
the same audience

------
monksy
If it'll get newspaper to snap out of reporting their opinion pieces and
baises, I'm all for it. I don't wish the layoffs on anyone, however, they
don't seem to push a great value for their customers.

I want to see good quality reporting, and I don't want them to try to inject
their selective editing/political agenda in it.

~~~
eropple
_Each and literally every piece of media you consume has its bias._ Vice,
Buzzfeed, McClatchy, etc. make very clear their biases, which is certainly
more than one can expect of submarining, facts-optional pieces from much of
the "unbiased" media. "Good quality reporting" is inherently and inescapably
_biased_. It inherently and inescapably relies upon the point of view of the
reporter or the investigator _and_ that of the editor who determines whether a
story deserves publication and thus attention (for who in the modern era does
not understand at least the basics of an attention economy?).

But, of course, it's funny how this complaint truly surfaces when those biases
are ones that the complainant does not _like_. It's _interesting_ how biases
that do not challenge the majority intersection of "affluent, white, male" get
so much leash in places like HN.

~~~
monksy
So there was something that really opened my eyes, the story goes like this:

Chic fa la has now just gotten in trouble for not letting someone use their
bathroom.

Insert other witnesses or talk about 2nd parties in the story.

Chickfla is the group that came under contrivesery for supporting anti gay
charities.

Look for that you'll see it in a lot of stories. I started noticing that when
I saw the Milo stories on the BBC. They like to harp on something that he did
(usually it's something that the writer doesn't like), they'll also inflate
the second party members in the story [who was surrounding it] to their liking
(we'll the SPLC said this and that), and then they'll try to bring a call back
to something that'll make the person look bad and unrelated (i.e. prior
controversy).

Like/dislike the guy, the selective journalism/editing and the unrelated call
back is: unproductive, dishonest, and is propaganda.

> But, of course, it's funny how this complaint truly surfaces when those
> biases are ones that the complainant does not like. It's interesting how
> biases that do not challenge the majority intersection of "affluent, white,
> male" get so much leash in places like HN.

I think you should point that out if it's a legitimate concern. (I mean not
concern trolling i.e. "well all the interviewed was white people" vs "from the
people they interviewed were white and se engineers which is a concern when
talking about COL")

~~~
eropple
_> Like/dislike the guy, the selective journalism/editing and the unrelated
call back is: unproductive, dishonest, and is propaganda._

No, it's _context_. You cannot reduce political action--and "political action"
should be understood as _any action between people or groups_ , there is no
light switch to turn it off or on--to a single-shot prisoner's dilemma game.
The game is infinite. Your history matters. The context of your actions in the
body politic matters.

News organizations have a duty to place events into context, and...this is
that context.

~~~
monksy
Should we consider the time that you said the N word as an edgy teen in middle
school? It's apart of your history.

Different unrelated events aren't context.

~~~
eropple
We certainly should take into context something like that, yes. For me, that
particular thing didn't happen--I was never quite so far to the right wing as
to think racial slurs were anything but unacceptable--but I was a shitty
libertarian know-it-all. I've never been shitty enough to out and deadname
trans people like Milo fucking Yiannopoulos, and I've never been shitty enough
to cape up for bad-science racists like Charles Murray, but I've been shitty.
I said things that made people mad (because they made me feel superior) and
hurt people (because they _intellectually made sense_ , because I was _so
rational_ and also had never had a hard day in my life).

Then I grew up, then I realized I was being shitty, and I stopped. And since I
have made a point of standing up for the right things, instead, while not
ducking that I too have been shitty.

That's _more_ context, and that context, eventually and with hard work, does
balance the scales.

It just isn't that complicated.

------
mudil
When Google and Facebook control 80% of the advertising market through
surveillance duopoly, 20% goes to all the publishers in the world. They are
starving. I call it Google's War on Journalism.

~~~
djohnston
adapt or die. facebook and google offer a demonstrably better ad targeting
platform than any newspaper can offer. if people value high quality journalism
then they should be willing to pay via subscriptions.

~~~
mudil
Adapt or die or be constantly followed and listened to by the surveillance
multinational corporations. I hope you enjoy being spied on 24x7, including in
your bedroom.

~~~
djohnston
i dont understand, no one is forcing you as an individual to use any of these
services or buy any of these devices. they also don't produce news, they just
offer a better solution for advertisers. it's not like these media outlets are
altruistic truth seekers anyway, although some journalists are. the NYT is a
publicly traded business, Buzzfeed built whatever legitimate journalism it
does on the back of clickbait gossip trash, and vice has devolved into a
caricature of what it once was.

~~~
wgerard
> i dont understand, no one is forcing you as an individual to use any of
> these services or buy any of these devices

Not to be too contrarian or tin-foil-y, but this is a bit simplistic view of
modern advertising platforms.

These companies absolutely have troves of information about you, even if
you've never interacted with them directly. Your social circle indirectly
shares information about you, retailers share information about you, etc.
Regardless of whether you use a platform like Facebook, it has a profile of
who you are.

Saying you're not forced to use their services or devices is only trivially
true: Sure, you're not forced to use it directly, but you might as well be
given that they're collecting your information regardless.

And sure, you're not forced to buy from retailers who share your information
or have acquaintances that use Gmail, but it's in the same way that you're not
forced to buy produce that Monsanto has touched in some way - basically, good
luck.

------
adamnemecek
I can’t tell if these layoffs are good or bad.

~~~
Kye
If I go by what I see on Twitter, it seems they're mostly cutting LGBTQ+
people and writers of color. Whether that's good or bad depends on your
perspective.

edit: I said "If I go by." I didn't say it was the case. It's a non-judgmental
observation.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
They also hired a disproportionately large number into the roles they are
cutting so it would make sense that they would be cut at higher rates.

~~~
Kye
>> _" They also hired a disproportionately large number"_

Did they? I haven't seen any statistics.

~~~
chmod775
Weird. That is what I was gonna reply to YOUR comment.

~~~
Kye
I asked for a source on a falsifiable assertion.

Do you routinely ask people to go and collect data for casual observations? I
don't know why _this_ one has people so up in arms when they happen all the
time here at HN.

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luckydata
Is this a case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"?

