Buzzfeed fumbled the ball on YouTube
PLUS: Every shortform creator eventually becomes a longform creator.
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Buzzfeed fumbled the ball on YouTube
The biggest news out of the media world this week is that Buzzfeed’s been acquired by media mogul Byron Allen. And while it’s still mostly unclear what this means for the company’s future, Allen indicated in a New York Times interview that he wants Buzzfeed to double down on its YouTube efforts:
On the conference call, Mr. Allen said he planned to expand BuzzFeed’s efforts in streaming and user-generated content, an industry term for video not made by company employees …
“As of this moment, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube and the other big tech platforms,” Mr. Allen said.
The irony here is that BuzzFeed was an early YouTube pioneer, yet ultimately fumbled the opportunity to turn its franchises into a true media empire.
In the 2010s, the company focused heavily on one-off viral videos, but it was also among the first publishers to develop repeatable franchise formats on YouTube. In the process, it helped launch the careers of creators like Michelle Khare and Safiya Nygaard while also building passionate audiences around series like Worth It, Tasty, and The Try Guys.
So what happened? Why did it squander such an early lead?
Part of the problem was its inability to retain talent. BuzzFeed entered YouTube so early that it still operated with fairly traditional employment contracts, restricting creators from launching their own channels or collaborating freely with other YouTubers. Many stars eventually rebelled against those limitations and left to start independent ventures. “Why I Left BuzzFeed” videos became so common on YouTube that they practically turned into their own genre.
But the bigger issue was BuzzFeed’s acquisitions of HuffPost and Complex. The deals saddled the company with so much debt that it effectively triggered a financial death spiral, consuming capital that could have been invested in expanding its YouTube business. It’s difficult to launch new franchises when most of your energy is focused on keeping creditors at bay.
If nothing else, this latest acquisition could at least put the company on firmer financial footing and give it another chance to invest seriously in the kind of creator-driven franchises it once helped pioneer.
(BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)
ICYMI: He Shut Down Time’s Moscow Bureau. Then He Built His Own Magazine
Nathan Thornburgh explained how the magazine Roads & Kingdoms rebuilt itself after Anthony Bourdain’s death.
That case study actually sits behind a paywall, but if you’re not ready to subscribe, I also included it in an ebook that you can download over here.
How self-publishing can help an author break into traditional book publishing
Publishers Weekly wrote about how traditional publishers are getting increasingly comfortable signing deals with self-published authors:
Before Christian publisher Baker Publishing Group announced its new Haven romance imprint—no spice, no religious content—senior acquisitions editor Rochelle Gloege began looking for historical authors with established track records. She contacted Jennie Goutet, who had self-published more than a dozen “clean and wholesome” historicals, via Instagram. “We acquire most of our books through agents and conferences, but we’re also looking at who’s interesting and who’s rising to the top,” Gloege says.
Haven will publish Goutet’s new Georgian romance, A Love Once Lost, in June. “When we acquire an indie author, we try to honor what the author’s existing fans already love about their work and bring those audiences over,” Gloege says.
It used to be that landing a first-time book contract was a long, grueling process. Writers first had to secure an established literary agent — a major hurdle in itself — and then spend months revising their manuscript to the agent’s specifications before it was even submitted to publishers. If the author had any kind of track record, it usually consisted of a few short stories published in literary journals. Those publications rarely built a meaningful audience; their main value was signaling credibility and helping writers stand out in the slush pile.
That traditional pipeline still exists today, but there’s now a way to bypass it. More importantly, a proven self-publishing sales record gives authors and their agents far more leverage when negotiating a traditional publishing deal. That’s why many writers are now able to retain their ebook rights, allowing them to earn significantly higher royalties on digital sales.
***
After I posted about this on social media, two authors chimed in with their thoughts.
Kate Raven: “I have not read these authors yet… but they all did the long, grueling work before getting picked up 🙂 I think it marks a big change in publishers outsourcing risk to indie authors but it’s definitely not less work to get an agent and book deal this way.”
M.J. Etkind: “Being a self published author is long grueling work filled with a lot of disappointment and rejection and also it’s expensive … Very rarely does [a traditional book deal] happen on a first book and it’s often from building readership. It also happens because you’re running an entire professional publishing setup from your kitchen table.”
MY RESPONSE: I didn’t mean to suggest that the self-publishing route is necessarily easier, just that it allows one to bypass the system that relies entirely on the taste of a very small number of literary agents. I think the rise of self-publishing has at least somewhat leveled the playing field by removing the gatekeepers.
The unwitting victims in many viral videos
The YouTuber Christophe published a great deep dive into how Meta’s smart glasses have made it incredibly easy for viral influencers to film unwitting bystanders without their knowledge. This is something I’ve noticed myself in my own Reels feed — people getting pranked without even realizing they’re being recorded. I think it’s hugely unethical for an influencer to decide they’re the main character and that we’re all just involuntary extras in their movies.
The rise of the cable news hybrid deals
The Hollywood Reporter took a look at how cable news networks are warming up to “hybrid” deals that allow their TV talent to launch their own independent media channels:
On-air talent across the spectrum is dealing with the drawn-out death of TV in different ways. Some are seeking better time slots paired with digital extensions that can net them bigger contracts from TV networks desperate to break free from diminishing pay TV revenue. Others are resigned to having paychecks slashed or remaining static, clinging to their lucrative deals for as long as they can. “Everyone is obsessed with their brand now,” is how one TV news veteran explains it …
One insider predicts that there will be a slew of “hybrid” deals over the course of the next few years, with TV talent keeping one foot in each bucket of the business. And the good news for TV vets is that the marketplace for news, talk and interview content seems to be expanding. Yes, YouTube has become the de facto home for it, but TV channels are now buyers, as are platforms like SiriusXM and, much to the amazement of some, Netflix too (hello, Brian Williams).
I’ve seen several critiques of these deals arguing that TV networks are no longer building their own IP, but are instead helping grow creator-led channels that can easily walk away once their contracts expire.
I’m not sure I fully agree. For one, these networks are simply adapting to the reality that many of their top anchors could easily leave to launch their own ventures anyway, so it makes more sense to create incentives that keep them in-house.
More broadly, “talent arbitrage” is a perfectly legitimate media business model. The media and book industries, for instance, are built around partnering with creators who are free to leave for competitors once an album or book contract expires. Large parts of Hollywood operate the same way. These companies succeed by creating the right financial and marketing incentives to retain their most valuable talent. Networks like CNN and MSNBC still have plenty to offer creators; it’s ultimately a matter of aligning incentives.
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It doesn’t matter if you’re a YouTuber, podcaster, newsletter writer, or traditional news publisher — you’re going to find strategies here that you can incorporate into your own business.
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Every shortform creator eventually becomes a longform creator
Kareem Rahma, the creator behind the Instagram hit Subway Takes, was recently profiled by The Wall Street Journal as he prepares to launch a longform show on YouTube.
With the winds of viral fame at his back, Rahma is rebooting one of his earliest video concepts, Keep the Meter Running. In its original incarnation, it featured Rahma hailing a yellow cab and instructing the driver to take him to a favorite local haunt. The show was a hit but costly to produce.
Now it’s going to YouTube as a series, with 10 episodes rolling out weekly from May until July. It’s equal parts interview show and slice of life—a working-class travelogue in the vein of one of Rahma’s heroes, Anthony Bourdain …
For a time, Rahma and CNN discussed a plan for the network to develop and license a version of Keep the Meter Running for television and streaming. Rahma felt that the talks moved slowly and was uneasy about giving up his independence.
Rahma’s trajectory mirrors that of almost every successful shortform video creator: eventually, they try to make the jump to longform content.
There are likely several reasons behind the shift, including the opportunity to expand creatively, but the biggest driver is economic. Shortform video doesn’t lend itself to ad breaks because viewers can instantly scroll to the next clip. As a result, creators working primarily in shortform usually have to rely on standalone sponsored posts to monetize their content.
The problem is that Instagram and TikTok tend to throttle the reach of fully sponsored videos, forcing brands to spend additional money on “branded content ads” to boost distribution. In practice, that means the platforms are capturing revenue that might otherwise go directly to creators.
That’s why so many creators eventually pivot to longform. Most longform distribution happens on YouTube, which shares nearly half of its ad revenue with creators. Just as importantly, longform videos can accommodate actual ad breaks, opening up both programmatic advertising and custom sponsorship opportunities.
Of course, this transition would be less necessary if Instagram and TikTok shared more revenue with shortform creators, but that increasingly seems unlikely. In fact, Instagram has scaled back many of the creator bonus programs it once used to incentivize posting.
And yet creators continue uploading original content to these platforms, giving them little reason to change course.
(BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)
This media startup is trying to reach readers exhausted by political noise
Straight Arrow News was founded around a simple idea: a lot of Americans feel like they’re living in completely different realities depending on where they get their news. The company grew out of conversations between founder Joe Ricketts and media executive Jonathan Harding, who come from different political viewpoints but realized they were often consuming very different versions of the same stories. Their goal was to build a digital news outlet focused on politically unbiased reporting and a clearer separation between news and opinion. Over the past year, that mission has increasingly been shaped by chief content officer Derek Mead, the former Vice editor who helped oversee that company’s international expansion and also ran its US newsroom.
In a recent interview, Mead explained why the company is moving away from high-volume aggregation and investing more heavily in original journalism, how it’s using video and social distribution to reach audiences fatigued by partisan news, and why he believes there’s still room for a new national media brand built around trust instead of outrage.
You can watch the interview on YouTube.
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