Current Events > SJW media companies are dying like crazy

(+) Yeah! (+)

Get "woke", go broke

http://www.businessinsider.com/univision-selling-fusion-media-group-report-2018-7

Univision Communications now wants to unload Fusion Media Group coming two years after it bought a half-dozen websites from Gawker Media in a bid to boost its reach among younger audiences.

The Hispanic media giant is exploring a sale of Fusion Media Group, the Wall Street Journal reported. (Univision declined to comment.) The strategic about-face comes after Univision cancelled its initial public offering plans earlier this year and has seen broad turnover among its senior executive ranks.

Univision last year had tried to sell a 20% stake in Fusion Media Group for $200 million, but failed to find any investors willing to go in on the deal, the Journal reported. According to the WSJ, potential partners were skittish about working with the Univision ownership group, which includes Haim Sabans Saban Capital Group, Televisa, and private-equity firms Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners and TPG.

In March, Univision CEO Randy Falco announced his exit one day after the company had scrapped IPO plans. This spring, it Univision laid off 150 employees as part of another wave of restructuring.

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Fusion Media Groups Gizmodo Media Group brands are Gizmodo, Deadspin, TrackRecord, Lifehacker, Jezebel, Splinter, The Root, Kotaku, and Jalopnik. In addition, the Fusion Media Group includes the companys interest in the Onion, Clickhole and The A.V. Club as well as two cable networks Fusion TV, a news and lifestyle English-language network, and Univisions interest in El Rey Network and a production studio.

Turns out, nobody likes SJW opinion blogs. Who woulda thought.
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Can't pay the bills with a circle jerk.
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They never existed in the first place.
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Vice and Buzzfeed are still huge
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Let me know how Voat, Gab, and all the other alt right platforms are doing before you talk shit
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Everything SJWs touch turns to shit.

Sounds like people dont want to work with the ownership group more than anything.

But Im not surprised Mal doesnt have reading comprehension skills.
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Maeiv posted...

Vice and Buzzfeed are still huge

The fact that Vice was co-founded by fucking Gavin McInnes is extremely funny to me.
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Good riddance.
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Gafemage posted...

Maeiv posted...

Vice and Buzzfeed are still huge

The fact that Vice was co-founded by fucking Gavin McInnes is extremely funny to me.

You'd think that'd be enough for his idiotic followers to realize it's all bullshit and a gimmick he's playing, yet he's still somehow relevant.
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*Gawker sites are dying like crazy

still good riddance tho
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The Great Muta 22 posted...

Gafemage posted...

Maeiv posted...

Vice and Buzzfeed are still huge

The fact that Vice was co-founded by fucking Gavin McInnes is extremely funny to me.

You'd think that'd be enough for his idiotic followers to realize it's all bullshit and a gimmick he's playing, yet he's still somehow relevant.

Vice used to be fucking awesome. They had their journalists do undercover filming in North Korea and shit.

Now it's all identity politics bullshit. And they're blocking archiving sites so people can't discover their fuckups.


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Here is what they have to say about Univision's management
https://specialprojectsdesk.com/univision-is-a-fucking-mess-1825836622

We recently spoke to more than two dozen current and former Univision employees from every level of the company, private equity experts, and management consultants, and reviewed a wide range of documents, and the picture that emerged is clear: Despite the debt hanging over Univisions head, the company indulged a culture of complacency and excess, embodied in many ways by the operations of Fusion Media Group, an ill-fated attempt to stay relevant in the digital age. And now that the ship is off course, the rival interests in the company are at each others throats, in some cases diving off the ship and in some cases teaming up to force enemies off the gangplank. The first few months of this year have seen severe and ongoing cuts, the replacement of the chief financial officer, and the announcement that chief executive officer Randy Falcowho in a recent company-wide email announcing layoffs was reduced to describing them as disruption ... required to transform this business into a company that will not only exist but continue to thrivewill retire by December.

From routine human resources fuckups to vastly overselling the prospects of an IPO whose ultimate doom this March precipitated the companys current cost-cutting spree, Univision has been deeply mismanaged and is in the midst of making huge cuts that have, among other things, already claimed vast swaths of Univision Noticiasthe most vital newsgathering operation serving the Spanish-speaking community in the U.S.and Fusion Media Group. Consultants from Boston Consulting Group, who have reportedly recommended budget cuts of up to 35 percent in some parts of the company, have been combing through the books for months, and more than 150 people have been laid off so far. Plenty more cuts are pending (Univision president of news Daniel Coronell reportedly described them as catastrophic to his newsroom), including at GMG, the staff of which fears the newsroom may be cut by up to a third by the end of June, perhaps as part of a broader pivot toward video and branded content. What is happening to the company is not ultimately a failure of editorial or even executive management, though: If Univision was a mammoth whose failure to adapt slowed it down, it was private equity investors, consumed by the thought of turning their riches into more riches, who brought it down and bled it dry.

The pursuit of a public offering failed due to a combination of antsy investors, new competition, and a private equity deal that the Financial Times would later describe as a symbol of the excesses of the credit bubble. That last bit is the most important.

In 2007, a consortium including Texas Pacific Group, Thomas H. Lee, Madison Dearborn, Providence Equity, and Saban Capital took Univision private for $13.7 billion. These firmsexecutives of which still shape Univisions boardborrowed heavily to finance the deal, saddling their new prize with more than $10 billion of debt. According to an FCC filing, each firm holds between 20.6 and 7.1 percent of Univisions equity, and between 27.3 and zero percent of the voting interests.
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Univisions ratio, estimated at 12.5-to-1, made it highly leveraged even by the standards of the pre-crisis boom period. (In 2013, Obama administration regulators would urge banks to limit companies leverage to roughly half this level to reduce the risk of default.)
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Private equity firms typically cash out their investments after a few years, and Univisions backers have been looking for an exit since at least 2014, when they held preliminary negotiations with CBS and Time Warner to sell the company for a reported asking price of more than $20 billion. Those talks soon collapsed.

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Continued

Fusion hired big names from digital, print, and televisioninfamously, it reportedly paid financial journalist Felix Salmon, who came on proclaiming that he would be post-text, more than $400,000 a year to do, as far as anyone could tell, nothing in particularas well as a thick layer of friends of Isaac Lee known internally as FOILs. Felipe Holgun and Daniel Eilemberg were prime examples, but Lee has a long history of keeping it in the family. Back in 2008, according to a FOIL, when Lee was running a local magazine called Poder in Miami, he helped out a friend from the business community (he dubbed her his fairy godmother) by hiring her son as an intern after he graduated college. That same intern was then hired at the Univision network a month after Lee was, and eventually came to Fusion TV, too.

At the working level, a lack of clear editorial vision left employees adrift. Relentless pivots meant that people hired to do one job were often given different assignments within a matter of months, ending up working on projects that didnt align with their experience; meanwhile, executives seemed far more focused on creating the narrative of a fast-growing media company than on what that media company was actually producing.

We didnt know how our projects were helping the company or how they were being monetized, one Fusion TV employee said.

For years, money flowed into a series of pet projectsthis U.S.-Mexico border concert is a typical examplefavored by executives and FOILs, while editorial staffers were left confused about the value of the stories they were pushed to pursue and wondering about the long-term viability of a company spending huge amounts of money without doing much the public seemed especially interested in. (As far as anyone could tell, practically no one watched the Fusion channel.)

One often-mocked example was Project Earth, Fusion TVs environmental unit. Headed by Nico Ibargen, an environmentalist and FOIL in top standing, it produced so much content about sharks that it became not just an internal joke but a subject of outside coverage. There were teams that had to work on shark stuff, a former Fusion staffer said. It was, [Nico] is a genius and therefore we must make shark content because he wants it.
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Even perfect execution might not have made the concept work. Its digital offerings launched at the height of Facebooks dominance over the media industry, into a crowded marketplace where even sites with clear voices would have had difficulty standing out. Some of Fusions biggest-budget Facebook pushes struggled to gain the following necessary to organically propel the new publication to the top of the News Feedsomething that led to a new focus on viral-friendly video and, according to a source with direct knowledge, seven-figure sums spent on simply buying traffic.
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The lukewarm response to Univisions attempts to sell or go public over the years can largely be attributed to the long-term debt its owners burdened it with in the first place. Univision has shrunk that pot from more than $10 billion in 2007 to just under $8 billion today, according to its most recent year-end report. But that debt is still far more than the amount of money Univision makes each yearroughly six times the size of the companys EBITDA. Thats about one-third higher than the levels seen at Sinclair Broadcast Group and Netflix in 2017, according to Fitch, and more than double that of AMC Networks. The ratings agency Moodys said in a 2017 report that Univisions debt has junk-bond status.

Whats more, interest payments on debt still eat up a sizable chunk of Univisions earnings. Without such payments, the company would have been safely profitable since 2012. Univision financial reports show interest expenses totaled $442 million in 2017 alone; over the past three years, theyve amounted to $1.46 billion.

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The Great Muta 22 posted...

Let me know how Voat, Gab, and all the other alt right platforms are doing before you talk shit

You don't need to be alt right to disagree with insane identity politics nonsense.
Those sites are dying because not even leftists want to read that shit.
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Antifar posted...

Here is what they have to say about Univision's management

"Univision is to blame for Gizmodo's failure!" - Gizmodo
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Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.
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XHJYFL posted...

Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/1265-sonic-the-hedgehog-general
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What GMG does do is draw a large and growing audience for its journalismaccording to ComScore, it drew 58 million unique U.S. visitors this Marchand make money off it. (Revenues are believed within GMG to have been up by a double-digit percentage last year; Univision declined to comment.) It is leanGMGs staff of about 200 pales in comparison to other digital media staffsand, according to a statement Univision issued in response to questions from GMG, thriving. BuzzFeeds news division alone is about 300 people, and that doesnt include BuzzFeed entertainment and BuzzFeed media brands, which include the likes of Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeeds total staff is roughly 1,700 people.

Not only is GMG lean, but it is in an increasingly strong position relative to competitors, in part because of its relative lack of reliance on Facebook. According to ComScore, Buzzfeeds U.S. unique visitors were at 67 million this March, down nearly 20 percent from March 2017; GMG traffic is up by a third over the same period.

That seems to dispel the idea that nobody is reading
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Antifar posted...

Here is what they have to say about Univision's management

"Univision is to blame for Gizmodo's failure!" - Gizmodo

I don't even know why you try, Antifar. He's not interested in constructive discourse. But thanks for the information regardless.
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XHJYFL posted...

Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.

Not yet. Marvel is still pushing SJW shit in the comics.
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Nomadic View posted...

XHJYFL posted...

Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.

Not yet. Marvel is still pushing SJW shit in the comics.

I know. That's what I meant by doubling down. SJW crap is losing them readers and money, but they're still doing it because they'd rather call detractors "racist/sexist/etc" than succeed I suppose.
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Antifar posted...

Here is what they have to say about Univision's management

"Univision is to blame for Gizmodo's failure!" - Gizmodo

"Don't stop me from yelling about those darn Es Jay Dubyas!"
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Nomadic View posted...

XHJYFL posted...

Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.

Not yet. Marvel is still pushing SJW shit in the comics.

I dont like something therefore its SJW!!!!

Fucking lol
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Antifar posted...

What GMG does do is draw a large and growing audience for its journalismaccording to ComScore, it drew 58 million unique U.S. visitors this Marchand make money off it. (Revenues are believed within GMG to have been up by a double-digit percentage last year; Univision declined to comment.) It is leanGMGs staff of about 200 pales in comparison to other digital media staffsand, according to a statement Univision issued in response to questions from GMG, thriving. BuzzFeeds news division alone is about 300 people, and that doesnt include BuzzFeed entertainment and BuzzFeed media brands, which include the likes of Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeeds total staff is roughly 1,700 people.

Not only is GMG lean, but it is in an increasingly strong position relative to competitors, in part because of its relative lack of reliance on Facebook. According to ComScore, Buzzfeeds U.S. unique visitors were at 67 million this March, down nearly 20 percent from March 2017; GMG traffic is up by a third over the same period.

That seems to dispel the idea that nobody is reading

67 million over an entire month is pretty terrible for a major media outlet

Markiplier gets 3x that per month
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Antifar posted...

What GMG does do is draw a large and growing audience for its journalismaccording to ComScore, it drew 58 million unique U.S. visitors this Marchand make money off it. (Revenues are believed within GMG to have been up by a double-digit percentage last year; Univision declined to comment.) It is leanGMGs staff of about 200 pales in comparison to other digital media staffsand, according to a statement Univision issued in response to questions from GMG, thriving. BuzzFeeds news division alone is about 300 people, and that doesnt include BuzzFeed entertainment and BuzzFeed media brands, which include the likes of Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeeds total staff is roughly 1,700 people.

Not only is GMG lean, but it is in an increasingly strong position relative to competitors, in part because of its relative lack of reliance on Facebook. According to ComScore, Buzzfeeds U.S. unique visitors were at 67 million this March, down nearly 20 percent from March 2017; GMG traffic is up by a third over the same period.

That seems to dispel the idea that nobody is reading

67 million over an entire month is pretty terrible for a major media outlet

Markiplier gets 3x that per month

Markiplier doesnt get 201 million unique visitors every month. Fucking learn how to read.
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XHJYFL posted...

Nomadic View posted...

XHJYFL posted...

Unfortunately SJWs never learn. They will instead double down and push SJW crap into media despite it almost always losing money. Marvel learned this the hard way.

Not yet. Marvel is still pushing SJW shit in the comics.

I know. That's what I meant by doubling down. SJW crap is losing them readers and money, but they're still doing it because they'd rather call detractors "racist/sexist/etc" than succeed I suppose.

It's pretty easy to avoid accusations of racism. It helps if you have more detailed conversations with other people than just yourself though. You should try it.
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Vice used to be fucking awesome. They had their journalists do undercover filming in North Korea and shit.

Yeah, they covered stuff in countries that largely went ignored by major media.

They also had interesting stories on scientific progress before it's picked up by other outlets. E.g. I first found out about a bacteria that uses an enzyme to break down plastic back into its components from Vice. That discovery went to a Japanese scientist, but some folks in the UK replicated the result and even improved upon it with an artificially tweaked version of the enzyme. That could have huge implications for the planet if the enzyme is cheap enough and effective enough to be applied on an industrial scale. You could literally recycle plastics, or simply eradicate them, by reverting them back to their core components.

But you have to stomach their political stance in their coverage to find interesting stories like that.
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sktgamer_13dude posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

Antifar posted...

What GMG does do is draw a large and growing audience for its journalismaccording to ComScore, it drew 58 million unique U.S. visitors this Marchand make money off it. (Revenues are believed within GMG to have been up by a double-digit percentage last year; Univision declined to comment.) It is leanGMGs staff of about 200 pales in comparison to other digital media staffsand, according to a statement Univision issued in response to questions from GMG, thriving. BuzzFeeds news division alone is about 300 people, and that doesnt include BuzzFeed entertainment and BuzzFeed media brands, which include the likes of Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeeds total staff is roughly 1,700 people.

Not only is GMG lean, but it is in an increasingly strong position relative to competitors, in part because of its relative lack of reliance on Facebook. According to ComScore, Buzzfeeds U.S. unique visitors were at 67 million this March, down nearly 20 percent from March 2017; GMG traffic is up by a third over the same period.

That seems to dispel the idea that nobody is reading

67 million over an entire month is pretty terrible for a major media outlet

Markiplier gets 3x that per month

Markiplier doesnt get 201 million unique visitors every month. Fucking learn how to read.

Unless every single person who watches a Markiplier video watches it 3 times for some reason, he has more monthly unique visitors than Buzzfeed does.
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only one of these I've really read at all is kotaku and very very infrequently, basically whenever someone links something there. from my experience they tend to just mostly report on other already-existing articles while removing crucial details
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

sktgamer_13dude posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

Antifar posted...

What GMG does do is draw a large and growing audience for its journalismaccording to ComScore, it drew 58 million unique U.S. visitors this Marchand make money off it. (Revenues are believed within GMG to have been up by a double-digit percentage last year; Univision declined to comment.) It is leanGMGs staff of about 200 pales in comparison to other digital media staffsand, according to a statement Univision issued in response to questions from GMG, thriving. BuzzFeeds news division alone is about 300 people, and that doesnt include BuzzFeed entertainment and BuzzFeed media brands, which include the likes of Tasty and Nifty. BuzzFeeds total staff is roughly 1,700 people.

Not only is GMG lean, but it is in an increasingly strong position relative to competitors, in part because of its relative lack of reliance on Facebook. According to ComScore, Buzzfeeds U.S. unique visitors were at 67 million this March, down nearly 20 percent from March 2017; GMG traffic is up by a third over the same period.

That seems to dispel the idea that nobody is reading

67 million over an entire month is pretty terrible for a major media outlet

Markiplier gets 3x that per month

Markiplier doesnt get 201 million unique visitors every month. Fucking learn how to read.

Unless every single person who watches a Markiplier video watches it 3 times for some reason, he has more monthly unique visitors than Buzzfeed does.

Maybe worldwide, but he isnt getting 201m unique views in the US.
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So is this yet another case of Mal_Fet not understanding something he read and dismissive any arguments against him?

Also, thats how many views all of his videos combined get in a month. He has 20m subscribers and Im sure theres more people who watch his stuff that havent subscribed. But theres not 180m more people, assuming all 20m subs are different people.

Fucking think for once in your life.
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sktgamer_13dude posted...

Also, thats how many views all of his videos combined get in a month.

So? It's not like they don't count a unique view of Buzzfeed article from a year ago.
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The Great Muta 22 posted...

Gafemage posted...

Maeiv posted...

Vice and Buzzfeed are still huge

The fact that Vice was co-founded by fucking Gavin McInnes is extremely funny to me.

You'd think that'd be enough for his idiotic followers to realize it's all bullshit and a gimmick he's playing, yet he's still somehow relevant.

Get off my lawn bitch.
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

sktgamer_13dude posted...

Also, thats how many views all of his videos combined get in a month.

So? It's not like they don't count a unique view of Buzzfeed article from a year ago.

So divide that number by his videos per month to get an approximate of his unique views. Are you unable to understand that?

So whats your point? That youre completely wrong on your original point? That you fail reading comprehension?

Itd just be admitting it to yourself because we all already knew these things.
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CrimsonRage posted...

sorry, those things exist and news agencies don't stop being good investigative journalist because they don't pretend they don't cause right-wingers are fragile.

you need to understand
anti SJWs arent mad that news outlooks acknowledge those things exist
they are mad that news outlooks think those things are bad
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BWLurker posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

sktgamer_13dude posted...

Also, thats how many views all of his videos combined get in a month.

So? It's not like they don't count a unique view of Buzzfeed article from a year ago.

So divide that number by his videos per month to get an approximate of his unique views. Are you unable to understand that?

That assumes each viewed video from that month was from a video posted that month. Could be someone watching a video from last year or whatever.

I just think its funny that Mal doesnt understand what unique visitor is.
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Jalopnik is not 100% shit tho

I will literally celebrate with a shot of whiskey the day Kotaku and Polygon go under.
SJW piece of shit sites.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqYxefOPeeY" data-time="
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funny how crying about sjws is a full-time job for some people. By funny I mean pathetic
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Trumpo posted...

Jalopnik is not 100% shit tho

This.
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