A game of media industry “Would You Rather:” 1 trillion views or 1,000 true fans?
There was much ado about BuzzFeed supposedly slashing its 2016 projections after missing target revenue this year, which ignited a slew of reactions ranging from the self-righteous (lol see guys, BuzzFeed doesn’t have all the answers!!) to the terrified (wait if the peeps with a trillion pageviews don’t have the answers, WHO DOES?!?!).(Tl;dr, no one.)
Three interesting things to read in this context:
This mega-dramatic post from a business blogger proclaiming “The End of Scale” in the industry
This roundup of the latest digital media outlets that are struggling, from BuzzFeed: “The Digital Media Bloodbath.”
This post from Poynter, “Is going solo a good idea?” which looks at the power of a tiny, but good subscriber base (cough: like you!!) and the power of things like solo newsletters (cough cough).
Tl;dr part 2: the industry is in an interesting paradigm wherein bigger is better, apparently, until it isn’t. At least, not until someone has found a sustainable way to monetize exploding watermelons + Pulitzer-winning work alike.