BuzzFeed Blow: “We don’t want to be judged by the clicks we produce”

A day of strike for BuzzFeed News employees who demand the leading digital content company wages commensurate with the cost of living, less control over their freedom to express opinions outside the workplace and an opinion about work that is unaffected by online traffic: “We prove Buzzfeed does not exist without us” is the motto Duplicate on the guild profile on Twitter.

BuzzFeed News Union spokespeople released a statement taking all requests into account: “After nearly two years of negotiations, we want the company to offer more than 1% of the yearly increases they’ve guaranteed and to make more annually the $50,000 base salary.” A figure that guild members feel is “not enough to live in cities where there are editing rooms, let alone if it is enough to attract new talents”.

shareholder meeting

The strike took place on December 2, coinciding with the meeting of shareholders of the American company that works in the field of digital information and entertainment. BuzzFeed has offices in New York and San Francisco and was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III, has more than a thousand employees. “Today Buzzfeed shareholders are voting to go public with a deal that will make our wealthy CEOs even richer. Management believes Buzzfeed is the future of digital media. And we agree. But we believe that the future can only be strong if our business conditions are such,” BuzzFeed News Consortium members said. “.

Journalists and digital designers also went on strike to stand against management’s attempt to implement “creative control of work” in ways outside of their purview. Stricter rules affect employees’ private lives and limit their freedom to post private content on their social profiles: “We live a large part of our lives online and Buzzfeed is trying to steal our lives, free time and hobbies.”

Readers’ Bias

Not only that, for the union, the company’s management has repeatedly opposed the request of employees not to judge them on the basis of traffic and statistics of their products: “Page views and clicks are not something a single employee can control and are often affected by social media algorithms and reader bias. We believe that in front of any news from Buzzfeed, the reader should be able to understand that we are employees who work guided by honesty, not clicks.”

BuzzFeed is an information site that collects news from the Internet and distributes it in a successful mix of entertainment and advertising. These are articles in online newspapers, blogs, vlogs, and podcasts on all topics, from economics to DIY. Over time the network has evolved and today includes several assets: BuzzFeed Originals, the original member; BuzzFeed News, dedicated to investigative and investigative journalism; BuzzFeed Studios, which produces original content across film and digital platforms.

BuzzFeed’s articles are very popular on the web, are often “viral” and the platform has hundreds of millions of unique users per month. In the United States, the format was such a hit that it was exported to many other countries around the world.

In February 2021, the company also purchased Huffington Post from Verizon Media. BuzzFeed owner Jonah Peretti co-founded Huffington in 2005.

(Pictured by Jonah Peretti)