Red Ice TV - March 29, 2022


Buzzfeed Newsroom Shutdown, Raised Hundreds Of Millions, Can’t Stay Afloat

Hosted by
Henrik Palmgren Lana Lokteff
Mentioned
Jay Lester Federer Jonah Preddy Ben Smith Spencer Henrik Mick
How Jewish Activism Transformed The West, Who Benefits From Ukraine-Russia War？ - Kevin MacDonald No-Go Zone： Ready For A ＊New＊ New World Order？ A Global Gay Potemkin Village

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

174.55

Word count

1,209

Sentence count

121

Harmful content

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Buzzfeed is laying off a bunch of people and downsizing their news division. They say they re shifting the focus to its Pulitzer Prize-winning news division, which I'm sure is going to be great, but despite the millions of dollars poured into this trash media company, they couldn t keep it afloat.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Well, another great news, BuzzFeed, yes, BuzzFeed, we love them, is laying off a bunch of people.
00:00:07.020 They're shutting down their newsroom and downsizing.
00:00:09.840 They say that they're shifting the focus to its Pulitzer Prize winning news division, which I'm sure is going to be great stuff.
00:00:15.860 So despite the millions poured into this trash media, they couldn't keep it afloat. 0.97
00:00:21.160 Their kind of shitlib content is literally easy to find. 0.99
00:00:25.060 It's everywhere. It's not special. It's not cutting edge. It's not shocking.
00:00:28.680 It's just common crap. 0.95
00:00:30.760 I saw a lot of the journalists that were laid off were saying it's a sad day for the future of journalism. 0.97
00:00:36.520 What would we ever do without BuzzFeed out there?
00:00:39.660 So BuzzFeed shares have dropped more than 40 percent since the company went public in early December.
00:00:44.480 They acquired HuffPoop in early 2021, and they had to lay off several dozen of its staffers right after.
00:00:50.880 Remember that? BuzzFeed's earnings was earnings called Tuesday.
00:00:54.680 Last Tuesday, CEO Jonah Preddy said the company is accelerating its investment in vertical video.
00:01:00.000 You love vertical video, Henrik.
00:01:01.380 The smartphone format used on the increasingly popular video sharing site TikTok.
00:01:07.460 And its news division will get smaller and prioritize the areas of coverage our audience connects with most,
00:01:13.840 which is basically entertainment, celebrities, and culture.
00:01:18.380 So they're going to be going to TikTok, doing TikTok videos about dumb celebrities and trash TV shows and all this. 0.82
00:01:26.100 They said a stronger financial contributor. 0.91
00:01:28.780 Remember the term? I'm sorry to interrupt.
00:01:30.060 Do you remember that pivoting towards video?
00:01:31.640 There was like the whole, that whole scene of HuffPoop and Mick and like all these entities basically did the same thing.
00:01:37.940 Anyway, go on.
00:01:38.520 Yeah. So they're going to involve focusing on big breaking news, culture and entertainment, celebrities, and life on the Internet on TikTok with vertical video, which Henrik hates.
00:01:49.820 And then BuzzFeed said that there was a bunch of workers that were laid off, oh, poor things, you know,
00:01:57.400 and they were unable to sell their stocks on the IPO, on IPO day because of some clerical error.
00:02:03.640 So then all the stocks is tanked, so they weren't able to make some money for all their hard work.
00:02:09.660 But as you said, Henrik, you know, we've outlived BuzzFeed, right, which is amazing, despite all the opposition, the censorship, the blacklisting, the defamation, running on pennies, essentially, compared to them, keeping alive because of you guys.
00:02:24.080 Do you want to take a couple of numbers here?
00:02:26.020 Yeah, let's see.
00:02:26.940 Total funding, right? Here it is. Let me go full screen here for you guys.
00:02:30.340 Crazy money. Crazy money.
00:02:32.160 Again, I mean, sure, we're doing this on a shoestring budget, you know, but like look at the amount of money here.
00:02:38.620 Let me scroll to the side here. You have a date here.
00:02:41.940 So the latest one, December 3rd, 2021, BuzzFeed.
00:02:45.560 Now, you know, as a technicality, yes, BuzzFeed News is considered a subdivision.
00:02:51.100 But in fact, BuzzFeed News is so bad, as you said, they're losing, what, $10 million a month or what was it, a year?
00:02:56.620 I don't know. It was something like that.
00:02:58.320 It's a lot.
00:02:58.660 But they said that the overall market capitalization value of BuzzFeed as a brand would increase about $360 million
00:03:07.260 if they severed the news department.
00:03:10.020 That's how sucky it is, right?
00:03:11.220 But anyway, December 3rd, 2021, $150 million raised.
00:03:15.780 January 1st, 2020, $50 million.
00:03:19.660 November 18, 2016, $200 million.
00:03:23.640 Wow. Where's all this money coming from?
00:03:24.860 August 18, 2015, $200 million.
00:03:27.260 It goes off another $50 million, $20 million, $15 million, $8 million, $3.5 million, right?
00:03:31.760 But, and sure, some of them are like, well, what do they consider, like IPO debt or something?
00:03:37.220 I forget what it was.
00:03:37.820 But anyway, the point is, they are going down the toilet with this amount of money.
00:03:45.220 It's incredible.
00:03:46.140 And remember, like, the dirty journalism that they've been doing to this guy. 0.94
00:03:50.100 I mean, he looks like a creep. 0.99
00:03:51.700 He talks like a creep. 0.99
00:03:53.200 And if that's true, you're probably a creep. 0.98
00:03:55.300 Ben Smith. 0.73
00:03:56.060 Remember this guy?
00:03:56.780 Oh, yeah.
00:03:57.160 Remember the P dossier on Trump and, like, the most unscrupulous so-called journalism that you can imagine this particular brand has been behind.
00:04:05.600 And so they are definitely, this is wonderful news.
00:04:08.780 Attacking people like us all the time.
00:04:10.420 They're making millions.
00:04:11.340 Remember this piece?
00:04:11.600 And then they complain about a $10 super chat, you know, how crazy it is.
00:04:15.700 Remember this piece, how Sweden became the most alt-right country in Europe, right?
00:04:20.060 And I regret it now.
00:04:21.960 Oh, no, there's a Thor's hammer.
00:04:22.840 But I was interviewed for this one, and at the time, I was like, yeah, I don't know about this.
00:04:28.260 But I was like, all right, I'll take one for the team, right?
00:04:31.140 This is like when.
00:04:32.020 That was the only one you took for the team.
00:04:33.540 Yeah, exactly.
00:04:34.940 When we had association with, you know, Spencer and some of these people, right?
00:04:38.400 But anyway, so, you know, this is like some ha-ha funny hit piece here on everyone.
00:04:44.640 And I remember talking to Jay Lester Federer, or feeder, right?
00:04:49.760 And I checked.
00:04:50.260 He quit BuzzFeed about a year ago.
00:04:52.240 So I'm sure he didn't get any of those money, the stock money, if they even had any.
00:04:55.600 If you look at his feed now, it's basically a bunch of like, oh, my, what are they doing to the gays in Ukraine and Russia?
00:05:02.940 It's like full of like, all it is is like LGBT. 1.00
00:05:06.480 Hmm, I wonder if he's gay. 0.96
00:05:08.380 I wonder. 0.98
00:05:08.720 But it's literally just a string of gay feeds here. 0.85
00:05:14.960 That's basically what it's pulled down to.
00:05:16.060 Actually, on my wiki page, one of the guys that's sourced a lot, sourced, yeah, right, is a BuzzFeed guy.
00:05:22.440 And he was caught with kiddie porn on his laptop and then just kind of disappeared.
00:05:26.040 You know, that's the kind of people that they employed.
00:05:28.500 Yep, yep.
00:05:29.220 But so there you go.
00:05:31.820 We are at least for now slated to outlive these kinds of organizations.
00:05:36.060 How many we see now, right?
00:05:37.320 Half Poop have been laying off people. 1.00
00:05:40.000 Mick went under all together.
00:05:42.520 There's a number of them out there.
00:05:43.880 And I'm just kind of, I'm not obsessed with them and what they do.
00:05:47.880 Unlike from them, from, you know, about us basically, right?
00:05:51.740 Not only us, but I'm talking generally about like the far right or whatever the hell.
00:05:55.380 Latest scaremongering pieces about.
00:05:58.860 But yeah, so that's great news.
00:06:01.060 Big sad.
00:06:01.760 Do you love red ice?
00:06:19.160 Want more?
00:06:19.720 Get access to exclusive material by signing up for a Red Ice membership.
00:06:24.380 You'll be able to watch Weekend Warrior, our flagship show, the second hour of interviews,
00:06:29.840 and other special feature videos only for subscribers.
00:06:33.780 Were you a member and we lost you along the way?
00:06:36.460 Renew!
00:06:37.000 We love and appreciate you guys and gals and cannot do this without you.
00:06:41.400 Help us be a sane voice, a lighthouse in the sea of insanity.
00:06:45.000 As times get tougher, as people are searching for answers, they're going to need content
00:06:50.380 like Red Ice.
00:06:51.800 A little of all your support can go a long way.
00:06:55.140 Thank you.