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The super smart Internet guys were coming for the news business l ike Vaulter’s Lawrence entering the chicken coop. This was a time when “BuzzFeed envy” was common among top publishing executives that, consciously or not, mimicked BuzzFeed’s approaches. By 2014, The New York Times’ hand-wringing Innovation Report namechecked BuzzFeed 23 times, and the report’s existence was first reported by BuzzFeed. The BuzzFeed newsroom was innovative, marrying the audience focus on classic BuzzFeed with the serious work of breaking news.

Its expansion into news in 2012 by hiring Ben Smith, known for his frenetic, high metabolism blogging at Politico, was seen as a watershed moment. Ĭompanies like BuzzFeed were seen as the future. In those years, The New York Times, now seen as one of the few successful news operations, was in hock to a Mexican billionaire and regularly the subject of questions of its viability. The financial crisis had brought legacy news media to the brink. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a new crop of digital media companies took flight, backed with venture capital infusions, betting they could reshape news, and attract those pesky millennials, for a changed media environment being defined by Facebook and other tech platforms. The closure of BuzzFeed News is the perfect hook for an “end-of-an-era” column.

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