The digital media bubble has burst. Where does the industry go from here?

theguardian.com:

Toward the end of Traffic, a new account of the early rock n roll years of internet publishing, Ben Smith writes that the failings of Buzzfeed News had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”.

No truer words, perhaps, for a digital-based business that for a decade paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a basic business requirement that applies to information as much as it does to selling lemonade in the school yard or fossil fuels.

Buzzfeed News, a pioneer of the internet news business that walked away with a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2021, said it was shutting down its newsroom on 20 April after shares in the company tumbled 90% since the company went public. Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti said the company “can no longer continue to fund” the site.

But that was just one of the pieces of bad news hitting the digital media sector.

Vice News, another pioneer of the period that once achieved a $5.7bn valuation, said it was re-organizing its news operation and cutting jobs as it seeks to sell itself. On Friday, Vice was said to be nearing a $400m acquisition deal from Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management.

The deal, which would save the company from liquidation, would wipe out nearly every Vice stockholder, the Wall Street Journal reported, including backers such as private equity firm TPG Group, Sixth Street Partners and media mogul James Murdoch.

There have been other recent traffic-war casualties: Gawker, which could be said to have started the blog-to-publishing revolution in the early aughts, following the Drudge Report, closed again earlier this year after a brief re-incarnation. And a new