news media

BuzzFeed’s editors had learned through trial and error that social media was organized in large part around identities. Write compellingly about what it was like to be born in the 1990s, or to be an Iranian from New Jersey, or a Catholic girl, or to grow up with East Asian parents, and thousands of people would share the post with the magic words

think about why people would share something—not just because they enjoyed it, but because the act of sharing would bring them closer to their friends, or say something about themselves.

People shared content that reflected well on them, he noted—they were more likely to share a post about earthquake relief than one about celebrity gossip. They shared content connected to their identity. They shared things that made them look clever and funny.

For decades, journalists’ incentives had been set pretty much by their editors: you wrote what you were assigned to write, or went where the natural evolution of a story took you. The blog years, and the early flickerings of traffic, had produced a new kind of media powerhouse, in which obscure and partisan figures like Drudge could reward you with

Serious journalists sneered nervously at the idea that you’d allow your news judgment to be replaced by crude clicks—that is, by the fast-shifting attention of your audience.

They cared who was reading, not how many. They measured themselves by the old standards of journalism: power, relevance, impact.

measuring interest and intent, and channeling it into action.