BuzzFeed, the somewhat new media giant, is multiplying. The company announced today that it will separate itself into two distinct departments—BuzzFeed News and a newly formed BuzzFeed Entertainment Group (BFEG)—in a move aimed at solidifying its dominance in digital video.
In a memo sent to BuzzFeed staff Tuesday afternoon, BuzzFeed C.E.O. Jonah Peretti wrote that “Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department.’” He continued, “Instead of organizing around a format or technology, we will organize our work to take full advantage of many formats and technologies.”
That reorganization will create a new department, BuzzFeed Entertainment, led by BuzzFeed Motion Pictures president Ze Frank. It will serve as an umbrella for all its entertainment content, including short- and long-form video, lists, quizzes, and micro-content. The group will also focus on expanding its entertainment video in New York City—outside of the massive Los Angeles lot that Frank currently oversees.
BuzzFeed News will expand under Ben Smith, the memo states, bringing its health team, global news operation, and video news under his purview.
Peretti noted that this new structure positions BuzzFeed to become something like the Paramount of the 21st century—an entertainment conglomerate built to be consumed quickly and everywhere. And whatever the future of news looks like, this move allows BuzzFeed to have a piece in shaping that, too.
“We have an opportunity to be the leading entertainment company for the mobile, social age,” he wrote. “And we are in position to build the #1 global news brand for a new generation who consume news differently than their parents, but care passionately about what is happening in a quickly-changing world. “
The news comes amid reports this year that BuzzFeed badly missed revenue targets and cut its internal projections for this year in half (a report the company denied), and worry among staffers that the company’s push into video might mean a pullback in news. Last year, Comcast’s NBCUniversal invested $200 million in BuzzFeed at a $1.5 billion valuation—a strategic partnership that suggested the digital media company was interested in more remunerative revenue streams than native advertising. With the creation of BFEG, the 10-year-old start-up appears to be evolving into something new.
“Thinking about where we fit in the industry, it’s a lot easier to think about when we’re organized as news and entertainment, than thinking about it in terms of being organized in video and Web site, or text and video,” Peretti told the Hive on Tuesday afternoon.
As to concerns over whether this means retreating from news, Peretti said he understands that the shift toward video can be “scary for people who write for a living.” But he noted that change is an industry-wide concern, not one unique to just BuzzFeed.
For BuzzFeed reporters, he said this presents an opportunity. “Reporters and writers are the ones who call people to interview them, who get scoops. So having really great reporters is something that’s valuable to our video-news operation,” he said. “Having more video-news capacity means that our reporters can write it up and also push that to our video team so they can reach an even bigger audience.”
Asked if he thinks the organizational split could lead to BuzzFeed News spinning off down the line, Peretti compared the push into both entertainment and news to what Ted Turner did with both CNN and TBS. “Back in the day, all the big incumbents would criticize CNN and TBS and make fun of them, saying they were never going to make it and that they weren’t legitimate,” he said. “They really just had a better model and stuck to it. Ted Turner didn’t care what anyone thought, and he built a news and entertainment empire side by side.”
It is interesting that Peretti invokes CNN, whose president, Jeff Zucker, took a big swat at BuzzFeed in a Variety profile earlier this month. “I don’t think Vice and BuzzFeed are legitimate news organizations,” he told the magazine. “They are native advertising shops. We crush both of them. They are not even in our same class.”
Peretti’s only reaction to Zucker’s comments: “It’s very similar to what people used to say about CNN when it was an exciting upstart, developing new models.”
Read the full staff memo below:
