Nobody got around to posting about yesterday’s big media news, Ben Smith’s move to Buzzfeed, where he’ll curate a site that has this as its #2 featured story this morning:
If you’ve looked at Politico lately, it’s hard to argue that Smith didn’t make a move up.
Smith’s move is getting huge coverage by other journalists because they all know that click whoring is one of the few economically viable paths for modern journalism. Politico does it, and Smith is good at it, so it makes sense that he’d be picked to run a site that does nothing but put out click bait. Smith’s a big name, and BuzzFeed is proud to get him, so we get jabber like this:
[Buzzfeed co-founder] Peretti went on to explain how BuzzFeed’s small team of editors has already started to come up with new ways of reporting that involve not only covering stories but engaging in them as they happen. The best example he offered was the coordinated effort spearheaded by BuzzFeed that brought dozens of people to People‘s doorstep with RyGos face masks to protest the magazine’s not naming Ryan Gosling as the Sexiest Man Alive this year. Imagine a more serious future in which BuzzFeed readers show up on the campaign trail with masks.
Tell you what: let’s not imagine a future that stupid, and just deal with it if it happens.
All this talk of “engagement” is just an effort by Buzzfeed’s founders to obscure the fact that their type of media outlet has been with us since the dawn of the printing press. There’s always been a huge market for human interest stories, the lighter side of news, and for the lowest, silliest stories about politics. Buzzfeed will be successful because people like to look at pictures of fuzzy bunnies and cute kittens first thing in the morning, and they love hearing that Rick Perry thinks Solyndra is a country (Buzzfeed’s current #2 “hotlist” story) . Ben Smith knows exactly which kinds of kittens and politicians will get clicks, so he’ll be successful at Buzzfeed. It’s not that complicated, and it sure as hell isn’t a revolution in journalism.
Comrade Javamanphil
Oh sure but I am running out of go to sites for the
right’s daily talking pointsDC conventional wisdom of the day. I can’t stand Halperin and his two sentence “stories.” Sullivan is equally bad just with many many more words. Any recommendations?Raven
@Comrade Javamanphil: Barroon Juice?
c u n d gulag
mistermix,
You were talking about Ben Smith and you said “journalism…”
Heh, heh, heh…
Mino
ICanHasCheeseburger is my limit of cute.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Raven: No way. The commenters there are the worst.
rikyrah
good riddance to rubbish
Schlemizel
@Mino:
peopleofwalmart.com is the antidote for all that cute
Bring eye bleach
amk
Is this knock on tunch and his pics ?
Mino
@Schlemizel: Not brave enough to try that. Eye bleach? I’d probably try suicide.
Mino
@amk: Tunch is not cute&fuzzy@. He’s imperial. However, his fans???????????? Better not go there.
amk
Julianne Moore didn’t bring her research on Sarah Palin home with her ….. the flame-haired actress told us she “read every single thing” she could about the Grizzly Mama and “watched every interview” in order to prepare for her role as the former Alaska governor in next spring’s HBO mini-series, “Game Change.”
But when we asked Moore if she’d developed a newfound respect for Palin after delving deeper into her life, the actress, 51, raised an eyebrow and sighed deeply. “No,” she said quietly.
nydailynews.com/gossip/julianne-moore-research-play-sarah-palin-game-change-miniseries-hbo-article-1…
mk3872
Maybe one of these days the bloggers here @ BJ will be kind enough to explain to us dumb old readers, why political bloggers cannot live without Politico.
Doesn’t Politico literally represent and amplify EVERYTHING that you supposedly hate about our MSM?
All they do is reprint Republican talking points, replay the most controversial and misleading political ads and print the most obvious stories that exploit the latest media meme day after day.
Yet I read Mistermix, Cole and DougJ continually fluff writers like JMart and BSmith over & over.
It seems to me that you all are closet Politico lovers, it is your guilty pleasure and you are afraid or unwilling to admit it.
schrodinger's cat
@Mino: What is that supposed to mean? If being a Tunch fan is wrong then I don’t want to be right. Love that plush ball of pure cattitude.
corbin.dallas
And what was the Fox News Tea Party Rally Coverage again?
Amir Khalid
@amk:
Moore was talking about Sarah Palin, after all. What other honest answer could she give?
kerFuFFler
Yeah, there are never cute pictures of fuzzy animals on this site so we know the blogging is of high quality.
amk
@Amir Khalid: If only the frigging media were as honest as Moore in 2007, the tundra twit would have never set foot in mainland and would have been rotting in AK for ever.
ericblair
@mk3872:
What creeped me out about this bunch of yahoos is how they appeared on the media scene one day. No introduction on the radio new channel or anything, just acting like Politico had always been there while I was wonder who the fuck these guys were. I guess we’d always been at war with Eastasia.
geg6
Wow. I knew Smith was a whore (he worked for Politico, for dawg’s sake), but this really takes it to a new level with no pretensions to any kind of seriousness at all. Gotta admire that, in that way that you admire how slimy and disgusting some people are willing to be kind of way.
ornery
@mk3872: Maybe one of these days the bloggers here @ BJ will be kind enough to explain to us dumb old readers, why political bloggers cannot live without Politico.
Because sully doesn’t go over as well as in the previous months (and months and months and months).
Those who could be allies are mostly targets for dougj and mix and angry bl, if you hang around to notice. Mention ‘Nader’ or ‘Spitzer’ or ‘Kucinich’ or just say ‘Naomi!’ and you’ll see. It’s not like Senator Al Franken needs any attention, etc. or that any rising progressives or pol stars in the Dem field are a serious focus here.
But then, who wants to be a Dem really? It’s only the lesser evil, blech. So you will get mccardle and sully and politico … and snark about how bad o so bad they all are, heh heh. The real bullets are for Eliot Spitzer and Michael Moore and Naomi Wolfe. It is strange, yes.
Maybe this site’s sold out, who knows. This was a pajamas media outlet despite all the hipster lulz. Maybe some wannabe righties who are cursed with enough intelligence to see the blade? But Spitzer was the test and Cole did a giant prat fall for the ages. Now we’re all kind of just whistling past the graveyard here.
America in a microcosm: fascinated by the flame.
Linda Featheringill
Hey – Ben’s new employers are honest about what they are doing. They aren’t pretending to offer news or analysis or anything else. They just deal in eye candy.
Maybe Ben decided this would be morally preferable to his old gig.
geg6
@ornery:
Boy, that’s a whole lotta bullshit at this relatively early hour of the morning. Glad you got your inner emoprog out of the way for the day, regardless of how ridiculous you sound. Always good to get it off your chest so you can move on to something more productive in life.
amk
@ornery: oh, boy talk about early morning constipational pains.
kindness
So Ben leaves Politico, does that mean Politico is going to get better? I can’t fathom it being able to get any worse.
@Mino: I’m partial to their Failblog site for funnyisms.
Mino
@schrodinger’s cat:Nope, not gonna go there. I’m guilty of the same.
@ornery: My favorite diaries are Kay’s. She remindes me of what a Dem used to be.
This site does push back primarily, which is needed. But it is easy to fall into the habit of negativism.
@kindness: I admit to the bucket fixation.
The Other Chuck
Trending up to #1: “Ow My Balls”
BGinCHI
Assholes.
Plus, Ben Smith is fatter than Al Gore.
Catsy
@ericblair: Wow, okay, so it wasn’t just me, back when I first started seeing links to them. I thought maybe I had just failed to pay attention to this new up-and-coming “news” site as I’m sitting there wondering who the fuck Politico is and why I should care.
Brachiator
This was big media news?
carpeduum
And you mistermix do a story about the biggest scummiest click whores of all by………….providing links to them.
Heck of a job. Were you dropped on your head as a child? Just wondering.
Lol
The funny thing is that Smith is actually one of the *least* worst people at Politico.
Gregory
“Becomes”…?
ronobot
Oh, christ. Buzzfeed is one of my favourite web sites–for stupid and meaningless internet fun. (Let me stress the stupid.) Really hope he’s not planning on trying to turn it into a “real” news site.
Maybe this is a good move though: Ben Smith admitting that he’d rather do hard-hitting investigations of internet memes and celebrity faux pas than actual issues and real politics.
Anne Laurie
Ahem. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In moderation. As part of a balanced breakfast.
Although I hear the FDA wants to add a warning “If you find yourself LOLing for more than four hours straight, seek immediate medical attention”…
Nellcote
@ericblair:
Politico was started by DC Villagers (ex WaPosties) for DC Villagers so aside from press releases to other media sites, no introduction was needed. In a sense it was always there.
mclaren
This is my new tagline.
Unfortunately, to paraphrase J. B. S. Haldane, “The future is not only stupider than we imagine, it is stupider than we are capable of imagining.”