Hey, hear me out before you scream.
I want to talk about the Rise of Buzzfeed, and the apparent decline in writing on this site. Are they related? In a way, I think, yeah.
Let's talk about Buzzfeed. It's ridiculous I'm even writing this, right? Buzzfeed's that site with all those quizzes that waste ones time and pictoral treatises to "The Best Butts in Baseball", right? It couldn't possibly be news, or opinion, or have anything worthy of commentary by serious people, right?
Wrong!
Over the last year, Buzzfeed's poached some very bright, very talented, and very serious writers and reporters from a variety of more traditional progressive media outlets. Coupled with a committment to diversity that is not seen almost anywhere else in media, it's led to some amazing journalism that I am just not really seeing elsewhere en masse.
Some of the first American reporting from the Russian military annexation of Crimea and the Ukraine crisis? Buzzfeed.
Where did I first read about the despicable corruption scandal in the Mississippi prison system? Not here. Not Salon. Not The Intercept. Not 538, Vox, WaPo, Gawker, New York Times, Slate. Nope. Nada. Zilch. None.
I read it at Buzzfeed.
Where will one read about the border crisis. Not OUR border crisis, but the one ready to explode on Mexico's southern frontier? I read about it first at Buzzfeed.
When almost everyone went insane over Ebola in the United States, with poorly sourced reporting and near-hysterical rhetoric, who stayed calm? Buzzfeed stayed calm.
Okay, so now I sound like a walking commercial for Buzzfeed and I'm not done yet. I can also talk diversity too, as most New Media is overwhelmingly white, except for Buzzfeed. But let me stop and disclose: No, there is no "Buzzfeed Shill" payment headed to my paypal account. No, I don't work for Buzzfeed. No, I'm not in negotiations to work for them. Until this year, I didn't even like Buzzfeed and they were a frequent target for my caustic shade. I felt they were the worst Millenials had to offer.
Let's talk about Millenials. Trust me, it all ties in.
We are, we Millenials, an incredibly large demographic cohort. We're also, the oldest in that cohort, approaching our middle thirties. Yes, "Millenials At 40" articles are only a handful of years away, and they are coming. The youngest amongst us, at least those who went to college, will graduate next year and the year after. We are basically all adults now (and a not insignificant number of us have one or two children). I can't help but wonder if under Ben Smith (formerly of Politico), the rise of mature and analytical journalism is related to that. I like it.
Buzzfeed still has that silly, ridiculous side. A Buzzfeed reporter recently asked me on Twitter, "Why can't we have fun and be serious at the same time?"
Why not, indeed. They are the New Media organization to watch and as that same reporter told me: buckle up. I think the best is yet to come from them.
Of course, no one trusts Buzzfeed, according to Pew. Their reporters get frozen out of conference calls, like with the WHO. In D.C., politicos don't take them seriously (and I think, to their peril). No one seems to believe they can do news. I didn't before. I do now.
So, I've written a commercial for Buzzfeed. What does this have to do with Daily Kos? A lot, I think.
I think of Daily Kos as new media, just like Buzzfeed, abeit with a narrower focus than most. "More and Better Democrats" is our motto and general goal. A look at Community Spotlight and the Recommended list can show any casual viewer that we're a lot bigger than that.
And Daily Kos has a leg up on other new media. It's minority owned, and has a diverse staff. Like Buzzfeed does.
A few weeks ago everyone got an email, asking if they'd write more. I think that's a cool thing because, let's lay it out, there's been a decline. There's been so much of a decline that I can personally say that this isn't my first stop of the day for news and analysis and opinion (except on Sundays). Buzzfeed is. I get here after that and after Twitter. That said, Daily Kos certainly is my internet home, especially on Sundays, when the front page plays host to the site's best writing. Writing that's a lot like what I see at Buzzfeed every day.
Obviously there will be differences. Buzzfeed is growing into a formidable news site, whilst we are largely opinion. That is something I hope stays the same. But I'd like to see news articles broken here, and a bit more than just a paragraph and a blockquote. I don't really, now. I haven't in a very long time. I feel many have fallen into "TL;DR Syndrome" and as Buzzfeed and other outlets show, one can still have long, comprehensive reads on the internet.
I no longer expect to find pieces here like David Noriega's article on the undocumentated immigrants who rebuilt New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy, outside of a blockquote and a paragraph or two of original writing. A con artist also managed to get a lucrative contract cleaning up after Ebola. You didn't read that here---but Buzzfeed News covered it. And so on.
I think we can do better. Someone out there is a citizen reporter with a scoop on something, and I guess the main thing I'm arguing is there really should be a DKos News.
Like Buzzfeed News.
Remember when dengre broke the story about the abuses in the Northern Marianas Islands? And kept at it? And eventually, someone went to jail for it? That wasn't Buzzfeed. That was Daily Kos, and I suspect that coverage is part of why a whole lot of y'all came here in the first place.
I'm looking forward to seeing that here again.
Okay, feel free to scream now.