BuzzFeed draws a line between church and state

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BuzzFeed is separating into two divisions – BuzzFeed News and BuzzFeed Entertainment Group (BFEG) – with video as the core of the new organizational structure, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced in a company memo scooped up by Vanity Fair.

The company's editor-in-chief Ben Smith will take the helm at BuzzFeed News, and Ze Frank, president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, will lead the entertainment division.

The company has seemingly reorganized into two distinct editorial and commercial units. BuzzFeed's existing news department will absorb the company’s global news, health, and video news operations. BFEG, meanwhile, will house all of the company's entertainment content, including short- and long-form videos, lists, quizzes and micro-content. In addition, BFEG will expand the company's film production space in New York to supplement the Los Angeles BuzzFeed Motion Pictures studio. 

By dividing itself up, BuzzFeed can specialize more deeply in each space, and build its business from different fronts. In this vein, Mr. Peretti has likened the company’s re-organization to Ted Turner’s bifurcation of CNN and TBS. The new BuzzFeed will hope to emulate the long-running successes of Mr. Turner's offshoots by:

• Building audience trust with BuzzFeed News. The journalism unit is focused on in the long term on building trust among its audience. This is essential Doing this will be critical for developing BuzzFeed’s brand, its authority, and influence as a media entity. Quality journalism can raise the company's credibility and profile among newsreaders, and and in the news world is important for boosting the company’s influence as a media entity, and produce loyal, and potentially large, audiences.
• Focusing commercial opportunities in BFEG. On the other side of the coin, BFEG will act as the reservoir for BuzzFeed’s commercial initiatives, particularly for branded content and influencer marketing initiatives. BFEG will also contribute towards the entertaining content that draws people to BuzzFeed. Down the line, BFEG will want to establish itself as a full-fledged entertainment company with its own studios, bill of talent, and distribution channels – a Paramount Pictures for the 21st century, to borrow Mr. Peretti's terminology. The new company structure also improves BuzzFeed's positioning to venture into linear TV should it so wish (bear in mind its NBC alliance), though it will probably assess how Vice fares in the space before diving in.
• Leveraging video's storytelling supremacy. Video will underpin every major initiative at BuzzFeed, as laid out by Mr. Peretti. A sensible strategy, given that the format is in favor on social platforms. Video posts generated eight to 12 times the shares of non-video posts on Facebook, according to a SocialFlow study, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerman has stated that the platform would soon be mostly video. BuzzFeed's video-first strategy plays into this new order.

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