{"id":1805,"date":"2013-10-17T11:35:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/newsroom13\/?p=257"},"modified":"2021-06-22T18:43:15","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T22:43:15","slug":"why-you-secretly-love-buzzfeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/2013\/10\/17\/why-you-secretly-love-buzzfeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you secretly love BuzzFeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BuzzFeed-screenshot\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cObama Asks The Hill To Bomb Syria, As Explained By \u2018The Hills.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere Is Some Random Guy Mowing The Lawn Of The Lincoln Memorial Right Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c18 Forgotten \u201990s One-Hit Wonders.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know a BuzzFeed<\/a> headline when you see one. Not the newsiest stuff.<\/p>\n

Yet, hard news is where the social content website \u2013 best known for its endless animal GIFs, celebrity gossip and 1990s nostalgia \u2013 has been heading for the past year. BuzzFeed has added breaking news and long form to its classic mix of listicles (lists + articles).<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the struggles of the traditional media, there remains an insatiable desire for great reporting, entertaining content and powerful storytelling,\u201d founder Jonah Peretti wrote in a public memo in September. \u201cThe world needs sustainable, profitable, vibrant content companies staffed by dedicated professionals; especially content for people that grew up on the web.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of its move to provide newsier content, the site hired New York Times editor Lisa Tozzi as its news director.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like entertainment, and they like information. People think, \u2018Oh, BuzzFeed, the cat GIF people, are doing news,\u2019\u201d said Tozzi, who joined BuzzFeed in April and leads a team of 14 breaking-news reporters. \u201cThe New York Times has a style section and an entertainment section. People who read the Times don\u2019t say, \u2018I only read the foreign news.\u2019 They read everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about having variety on the front page, Tozzi said. \u201cYou want to mix it up and have a sample of different things for people to read and have an opportunity to be well-rounded intelligent people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this way, BuzzFeed is looking to provide readers with both entertaining posts for which the site is known and important journalistic content \u2013 breaking news, foreign reports, investigations \u2013 aimed at young people that is absent from print newspapers, Peretti wrote.<\/p>\n

People come for the cats, but stay for the news. Why?<\/p>\n

It starts with those headlines. Who can refuse to click on \u201cAwkward Moments You Wish You Could Teleport Out Of”? \u201cIncredibly Important Photos Of Anderson Cooper With Boo The Pomeranian\u201d is just begging to be read.<\/p>\n

Sometimes oddball, always intriguing, BuzzFeed headlines have even become a\u00a0point of self-parody<\/a>. Most of them contain a number and almost always promise some kind of emotional response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re things that promise answers or things that engage your emotion,\u201d said media psychologist Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center and an adjunct faculty member at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology in Newton, Mass.<\/p>\n

And although the articles are about politics, they make a commentary about people, \u201cwhich works pretty well because people are interested in other people, even if you don\u2019t know them,” Rutledge said. \u201cYou can’t help yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online content producers sometimes have less than a second to catch a reader\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n

Our brains notice things that are unusual to us, Rutledge said, and BuzzFeed\u2019s headlines and unusual content rely on this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe headlines promise sensational stories \u2018LGBT Rally In St. Petersburg Ends With Arrests And Violence\u2019 or \u2018Taliban Vows To Again Try And Kill 16-Year-Old Malala Yousafzai,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cYes, they are news \u2013 although, by definition, anything that happens we didn’t know about is news \u2013 but they are news at the outer edge of our expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

This curiosity is what keeps people clicking, she said. We anticipate a surprise in a BuzzFeed article that other sites might not deliver. Sometimes we\u2019re disappointed, but there\u2019s still a chance for a reward.<\/p>\n

The brain also processes visual images much differently than text.<\/p>\n

\u201cImages communicate more holistically, and they trigger connections to our previous experiences and beliefs at unconscious levels, long before we make sense out of them consciously,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

BuzzFeed\u2019s strategy appears to be working. The company has 120 editorial staff, according to a company spokesperson, and the site recently listed job openings for a deputy foreign editor, an investigations editor and a national security reporter.<\/p>\n

BuzzFeed ranked 24th as the most visited site on the web in September, logging 55 million unique visitors in the United States, according to data from Quantcast, a digital advertising company that measures analytics around the web. Google was No. 1 in Quantcast\u2019s U.S. rankings, and only two news sites ranked higher than BuzzFeed: NBC News (21st) and Huffington Post (15th). BuzzFeed had 85 million unique global visitors.<\/p>\n

The site is also earning money, Peretti has been reported as saying, and investing it in new media formats \u2013 beyond the list.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will always do lists, but we have the advantage of not being limited to a single format like many traditional media companies,\u201d Peretti wrote. \u201cWe do long form, short form, quizzes, video, original graphic art, rubbable gifs, apps and more. In the coming years, we will continue our R&D focused on inventing and advancing media formats.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the form breaking news should take, \u201cshort, smart nuggets of news that get to what people should know quickly are helpful,\u201d Tozzi said.<\/p>\n

And those lists? Lists have always been part of any great communicator\u2019s potential bag of tricks. They\u2019re digestible and helpful for breaking down complex stories. Think of the Ten Commandments and the Declaration of Independence, some of the most famous lists of all.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like different ways for consuming their news,\u201d Tozzi said. \u201cReading 2,000-word story after 2,000-word story can get hard after a while, so it\u2019s good to change things up” with lists and other formats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re harder to do than people think.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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