sacrificial email addresses at the ready!

So The Information did this kind of weird piece comparing how much revenue per employee is being made at media companies ranging from the NYT to places like Refinery29, Axios, whatever the f Cheddar is, and of course, BuzzFeed.

Tl;dr (also, sorry, the paywall is strong with this one & requires a sacrificial email address), The New York Times made $440,000 per employee on average, while everyone else came nowhere close (BuzzFeed’s was $205,000 per employee).

You COULD say that this means the average NYT employee is worth twice as much as a BuzzFeeder, as some wacky interpretations of this data point would lead the social media to believe, but like??? A) that’s a weird thing to say, and B) that’s a misleading thing to say.

For one thing (and The Info acknowledges this), revenue just means $$ coming in, not profits. The NYT has way higher operating costs (that paper though) for example, so this doesn’t account for like, actual financial profitability.

Nor does it take into account the actual companies being compared — as my boss’ boss Scott pointed out, even if you ignore the Gray Lady, these other “startups” are all in pretty different stages of development. BuzzFeed is a 12-year-old digital company; Cheddar is in its second round of VC funding. It’d be like comparing the study habits of a middle-schooler and a kindergartener, yo.

Like Deez Links? Forward this to someone who actually watches (is that what it is??) cheddar.