
BuzzFeed News Asks Readers to Chip in with Donations - m52go
https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-news-asks-readers-to-chip-in-with-donations-1535395575
======
IBM
I'd gladly support BuzzFeed News. Just today they broke this huge story [1].

[1]
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-
death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs)

~~~
jdietrich
Buzzfeed really do produce some first-rate journalism. Their investigative
work is absolutely equal to anything being produced by traditional newspapers.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations)

~~~
aerotwelve
I agree - their news division has really impressed me over the past few years.
They really should spin themselves off to avoid the negative association
between their journalism and the clickbait pop quizzes and gratuitous native
ads from the rest of the company.

~~~
berberous
I thought their strategy was for the clickbait revenue to support the costs of
their news division.

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strict9
Even the dedicated news section has headline now that reads: "x has a lot of
people shook on twitter."

Won't pretend to understand what kind of language appeals to 18-20 year olds,
but is that demographic valuable enough to have such garbage
articles/headlines interspersed with actual journalism? Such an enigma to me.

Seems unlikely that the demographic they're catering to at the expense of
everyone else would chip in with donations.

~~~
sparkpeasy
The front page of NYTimes.com currently lists among the hard news the headline
"Dogs in Poofy Dresses. You're Welcome." but I don't think that prevents a
wide range of age brackets from reading and supporting it.

~~~
JBReefer
There are a lot of people who feel the Times has gone steeply downhill in the
last few years. Personally, I've gone from an avid subscriber to never
visiting.

The Journal, the Economist, and the BBC are my go to these days.

~~~
geofft
When I was 18-20, I wanted to be the sort of person who read _The Economist_.
I got a subscription when I was 22 or so, I think. I kept up with it for a bit
and then realized it wasn't actually improving my life in any way - not even
keeping me meaningfully informed about the world.

Now that I'm older I'm more excited about people using "shook" as slang than
about reading _The Economist_ , and I intend on donating $100 as soon as the
button is live.

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_rpd
> The Guardian, a U.K.-based newspaper, has raised $130 million from reader
> contributions since April 2016.

That's actually a significant portion of its revenue (~$275 million last
fiscal). Quite interesting.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/77hdf](http://archive.is/77hdf)

~~~
scottmf
Irony, but thanks.

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ninedays
I always had mixed feeling about buzzfeed, the same mixed feelings I have with
Google. It's like there are 2 separate entites :

1) the Buzzfeed that is amazing and produce some incredible stories

2) The clickbait attention-whore buzzfeed that makes me lose faith in humanity
and in the internet in general.

For those wondering about Google :

1) The Google we all loved at first, creating incredible products that impact
people lives for the best

2) The creepy Google that tracks everything that I do all the time and makes
me angry that I cannot find any alerternative that could be as good.

I would have a really hard time donating to buzzfeed as long as it is not
clear for me what buzzfeed really is (Amazing stories creation or click bait
article).

Edit : typo and layout

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m52go
I actually think the offer to read this story on your Kindle is quite
clever...if they offered that to me in a pop-up before serving me a barrage of
ads, I might even prefer it.

And it's an honest revenue model! _And it 's 86 pages_, for crying out
loud...they should charge way more than $0.99.

Push that, instead of donations. IMO.

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JumpCrisscross
This is stupid. If you're a corporation, you don't get donations. You charge
customers for a service. If you want donations, start a non-profit.

As a New Yorker, I'd gladly pay a yearly fee to go to BuzzFeed-sponsored
events. But if I'm going to donate to support journalism, there are lots of
solid competitors for my money.

~~~
_rpd
Journalism is in an on going funding crisis. I hear what you are saying, but
there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a
pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content.
This is probably "their own fault" for training the public to expect free
online content, but at this point every possible business model is on the
table, including asking for donations in association with articles on highly
charged issues.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a
> pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content_

I don’t fault them for trying. But if there are “many alternatives with near
identical content,” what is lost in their going?

There is ad-funded free content and quality content behind paywalls. Donor-
funded nonprofit journalism exists in some markets. But donor-funded private
enterprise? Foolish.

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casiotone
Just as soon as they chip in with some real journalists

~~~
sparkpeasy
If only the journalists that reported these stories in 2017 at BuzzFeed were
real:

* Helping to free an innocent man who'd spent 23 years behind bars

* Exposing the true scale of Russia's targeted assassinations in the West — and how UK and US authorities have turned a blind eye

* Sexual assault at Massage Envy

* A dirty offshore bank — and its blue-chip Western enablers and protectors

* BP's dangerous accidents in Alaska

* The US government's shadowy national security contractors

* Whistleblowers: FBI software contains Russian-made code

and more: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/markschoofs/the-year-
in...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/markschoofs/the-year-in-
investigations)

~~~
AmericanChopper
You can't build a reputation on garbage clickbait, and then expect people to
take you seriously on-demand. Integrity isn't a light switch that you can
flick on and off. To take any investigative piece seriously, I have to have
some trust for the people that produced it, and I don't trust Buzzfeed to be
anything other than low-quality, no-integrity mindless garbage.

~~~
dghughes
I see you're being down voted into nothingness (ironic when the topic is about
integrity, journalism, free speech) but I agree.

Buzzfeed has been garbage for years at least here in Canada, some pretty vile
people work there (Scaachi Koul). I too can't take them seriously considering
their history. Maybe the US version is better and maybe I will find them
trustworthy but I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Even the NYT after that disaster with the hiring of Sarah Jeong. I didn't
realize it was OK to be racist as a retort I foolishly choose the option of
just never being racist.

Trust takes years to develop but will disappear in an instant.

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Simulacra
I find it incredibly fascinating that a site like Buzzfeed can do amazing
journalism, but the majority of mainstream media falls grossly short but
expects the same respect.

