Ten years ago, a bunch of tech nerds thought they knew what was up. They said the future was all about digital media. They had blogs like Vice, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Business Insider and BuzzFeed News, which they helped to start. These blogs were like rebellious teenagers, sick of the traditional media telling them what to do, and they found a following on the internet that grew with each passing day. And then Facebook came along and they went BOOM! Like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. Their news and stories were all over Facebook, and everyone and their dog was talking about them. They rose to power and their voices were louder than screaming banshees on Twitter.
But guess what? They weren’t the future after all. Gawker packed up shop in 2016, came back for a brief stint and then left again in February of this year. And now Buzzfeed News has said “peace out.” Vice, the other iconic brand of the era, is so close to bankruptcy they can smell the baked beans in the soup kitchen. TV, which is still king in America, is going through a weird stage and even social media can’t help them. A new kind of confrontational, hyperpolitical style was all the rage during the Trump years, but that seems to be fading now. So much so that corporate owners of cable networks put Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon out to pasture in the last month. Oopsie!
Every single media commentator from CNN to The Financial Times is saying the same thing: “The end of an era.” But when did this era begin? Where did this weirdness come from? That’s a tough one. A bit like figuring out where your drunk friend left his phone. I don’t know who the first person was to get real online or act nutty on the internet. But I decided to don my Sherlock Holmes hat and investigate. Because I’m just that cool. When I finagled my way into the archives, I found the first bright sparks of this media moment came from a particular place.
To sum up, ten years ago some digital companies thought they were hot stuff. They started blogs like Vice, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Business Insider and BuzzFeed News. But then Facebook came along and our newsfeeds blew up with links to their stories. They became powerful and their voices drowned out everything else. But now they’re closing up shop like it’s going out of fashion. Even TV is getting hit hard with the new confrontational style that is now going out of style. There is so much upheaval that even Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon have left their respective networks. Every media commentator is screaming that this is “The end of an era.” But seriously, when did this era even start? I don’t know, man. But hey, when I investigated, the first sparks started in a particular place.
Serious News: nytimes
