Buried halfway down a new column by media critic Michael Wolff is a revelation: Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, doesn’t think the viral content juggernaut will be around in three years.
“Ben Smith, [BuzzFeed’s] top editor, told me recently he didn’t expect BuzzFeed to be around in three years, not under its present owners nor in its present form,” wrote Wolff in a Sunday USA Today column.
That line bounced around Twitter among other journalists. What did it mean? BuzzFeed, with its mammoth traffic numbers and a steady stream of cash from investors, is widely seen as one of the rare, great successes in online media.
Should all the young employees, tasked with making endlessly entertaining lists (“29 things non-Brits will never understand about Britain”), start thinking of an employment Plan B?
“Is BuzzFeed really going to disappear in three years or is Michael Wolff totally off in space?” asked Matt Pearce, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, on Twitter.
Smith replied: “Of course we will be a very different place in three years. That’s a long time, and we are just getting started.”
Asked by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen whether BuzzFeed “would not be around in three years,” Smith said that is not his expectation.
“That is not my view, no,” Smith tweeted. “It’s also hard to know what it would even mean to say that.”
Smith’s answer didn’t seem entirely clear. Smith did not return a Washington Examiner request for comment.
For his part, Wolff was also ambiguous when asked about that bit from his column.
“What was the question?” asked Bloomberg’s Joseph Weisenthal.
“Ahh…how long does Buzzfeed have?” replied Wolff.
Wolff and Smith recently took public shots at each other, over a lunch both attended that was hosted by the ride-sharing service Uber.
Smith, as the guest of Wolff, wrote about details from the lunch, including comments from an Uber executive who seemed to indicate the company would try to dig up embarrassing information about journalists who write negative articles about Uber.
Wolff claimed that the lunch was supposed to be off the record and that Smith’s violation of that trust reflected poorly on Wolff. Wolff also did not return an Examiner request for clarification on the matter over Twitter.
