Except, you guessed it. I'm fricken viral. In fact, the Spritzler Report is like a web-based pandemic.
BuzzFeed News editors have told its journalists to do more with less, encouraging writers to publish more articles in an effort to drive extra traffic to the news site. A tall order for a newsroom that’s been gutted over the last year, with ~40% of employees let go, including the entire investigative team.
The company said it published 404 articles in February, a 24% increase from the same period the year before, and is even trying its hand with AI-generated content. However, the scope of its journalistic ambitions has narrowed, with the company now focused on “internet culture, celebrity news and the biggest news of the day”.
The directive comes with BuzzFeed in a difficult spot. Digital advertisers are pulling back, publisher relationships with social media remain volatile and BuzzFeed's time as a public company has been a disaster, with shares down 89% since November 2021.
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Although more acute at BuzzFeed, the problems facing the company are not unique — many of America’s largest online news publishers are struggling to pull in traffic. The latest data from Similarweb, via Press Gazette, reveals that 35 of the top 50 sites have seen monthly traffic for Feb ‘23 fall compared to Feb ‘22. The two biggest publishers, the NYTimes and CNN, both racked up more than 400 million visits in Feb — a drop of 21% and 22% on last year’s figures, respectively. Not all have been struggling though; entertainment sites like Variety and People have been booming, and The Sun's US launch continues to go well.
N.B. BuzzFeed News doesn't rank in the top 50 and is therefore not shown on this chart, but BuzzFeed's main site does.