Future of digital journalism as BuzzFeed and HuffPost lay off 1,000

Revenue-per-click, the business strategy that has informed digital publishers for years, was effectively pronounced DOA this week as leading players in a sector once viewed as the future of journalism announced deep cuts. Built on the expectation of fast growth in advertising sales, companies like BuzzFeed and Vox Media have instead found that Facebook and Google – “the duopoly” – have simply tightened their grip on digital advertising revenue. ’”

The accelerating deterioration of the sector is pushing publishers to find new streams of revenue: Vice has hooked up with HBO, BuzzFeed explored a now-cancelled project with Netflix and still sells Tasty-branded homeware through Walmart.

Source: www.theguardian.com