Consider the Opposition

[Jason Boyd]

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/why-cnn-hired-buzzfeeds-top-p...

     Many of us are familiar with and have seen entertainment videos and articles produced by the popular pop-culture entertainment site BuzzFeed.com. What we may not be as familiar with, at least I wasn’t, is that BuzzFeed actually has a portion of its site dedicated to news. And apparently, it does a really good job of reporting scoop news. So good, that CNN took notice and just hired Andrew Kaczynski and other members of his investigative scoop team from BuzzFeed.

     Typically, this wouldn’t be such a big deal as people move around from job to job in news reporting careers all the time. However, what does make this particular hire for CNN sort of a big deal is that the company’s worldwide president, Jeff Zucker, two months ago said, “I don’t think Vice and BuzzFeed are legitimate news organizations. They are native advertising shops. We crush both of them.” Yikes! That is quiet a declaration. Especially since Shani O. Hilton, head of U.S. News for BuzzFeed stated today, “We had more scoops on BuzzFeed News over the weekend than CNN has had in the past month.” CNN certainly does have a lot of catching up to do. Though, CNN may not be categorized as a "scoop" news provider, scoop news does play into the ratings and viewership that effectively make up a news company's draw to a particular demographic. And with this presidential election being as crazy as it has so far, scoop news seems to be of great value in order to provide an edge over competitors. 

     Given CNN’s recent hire and the irrefutable amount of scoop news content in BuzzFeed’s news section, it may be worth Mr. Zucker’s while to consider the competition before discarding their credibility so vocally.