RE: Everything is Becoming Buzzfeed
The internet made everyone a journalist, a writer, a photographer. It was a large platform that could absorb all kinds of 'writing' and gave everyone a voice that was previously available only to a few through editorials in the newspaper.
The problem with Buzzfeed is that it spearheaded listicle 'journalism'. I hated lists. A year ago, it somehow happened that a friend of mine quit his job at The Hindu, an Indian daily, and joined Buzzfeed as a features editor. No, he was not proud but his role was something different. His job was to commission meaningful articles on politics, society and culture. He tried. It was an effort to use Buzzfeed's large readership base to put some good content out there. He wrote Dreams of a Hindu Rashtra hoping to shed some light on the mentality of the ruling right-wing party. He cold mailed prominent journalists trying to convince them to write about the recent demonetisation drive that the government pushed on us about a year ago.
It's not much but I've seen a couple of good articles come from Buzzfeed India in the last year. Last week, he resigned/ was let go. A part of me was happy for him because he was always saying that he was not doing the kind of journalism he wanted to. But a part of me was sad because I had begun to look forward to the content he published on Buzzfeed, making the platform worth something. Now it will go back to being 'utter garbage that feeds off of and perpetuates the infantile anxieties of the Western world. And they make tons of money doing it.'
Beautiful, I love these terms and I'm assuming you're from the profession? I must say, your friend's work is incredibly out of place in Buzzfeed and it's a shame the blog puts so much weight behind "work" on 'manspreading' and 'mansplaining' much more so than actual cultural writing like your friend's. Hopefully he's at a place that actually celebrates diversity and deep thinking.
No no. I'm not a journalist, not even close. I come from a background of architecture and urban planning with a bunch of really good writer friends.
The sad part is that Buzzfeed is NOT the worst. (In fact, it garnered a LOT of criticism from its readers for this article about the Urban Poor sparking many debates about the difference between actual poverty and talking about being poor from a privileged point of view. It showed that the readers are paying attention and are not simple consumers of trash. The article made readers hold the site accountable for the content it produces. Which is what readers should be doing with content they click on).
Then there's Thought Catalogue, ScoopWhoop and so many more such sites whose content used to make me wonder why people spend time writing them. But I guess they have a big readership, no? Who's to contend demand for clickbait?