What went down at BuzzFeed's town hall

Coming to you with another packed free Thursday edition of La Fronde from Gangneung, South Korea (In case you missed it, I traveled with my mom on her first trip home since she left for the U.S. 40 years ago. It’s been great — and explains why I’ve been a little more offline than usual this week).

On the plane ride here I was reading Fortesa Latifi’s new book, Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online. It’s a no-frills look inside the world of child influencers and what it costs the kids at the center of it — a fascinating, unsettling read. I’ll be sitting down with Fortesa for a proper Q&A soon, because there are so many wild bombshells in this book that I want to dive into, but in the meantime she shared her favorite corners of the internet for today’s Maxed Out.

Also in today's issue: Inside BuzzFeed's post-acquisition town hall, Air Mail launches its first fashion newsletter and our latest Hot Jobs roundup.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Maxed Out is where we ask our favorite people in media about what they're reading, watching and listening to on the internet, but with a twist: they must come clean about how much time they're spending on their phone.

Tell us about yourself and your media career — what projects are you working on now?

Hi! I'm Fortesa Latifi. I'm a Senior Writer at Yahoo and my first book – Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online – was released in April.

What's your average phone screen time for a given week? Are you surprised by that number?

My phone screen time for the last week was 13 hours and 17 minutes, which comes out to a little less than 2 hours per day. I actually feel really pleased with that number. I've been evangelistic about the Brick device, which locks me out of my phone and it really works for me. I also am constantly texting my sisters and mom and have to post frequently on social media for work so I'm surprised it's not higher. I do feel like phone screen time is cheating a little bit because it doesn't take into consideration laptop screen time but also those feel really different.

Where do you spend your daily screen time online? What are your go-to spots on the internet that you think people should know and why?

I honestly look at screen time as work time, so when I'm on my phone, I'm mostly looking through Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok to come up with stories or to post my own. I think that's why my screen time is generally so low – because social media makes me anxious to be posting myself and when I'm not working, I don't want to be on it. I do really like Substack and have found myself spending more time there. For work, Rachel Karten. For fun, Okay Zoomer by Kelsey Weekman and Maybe Baby by Hannah Nahman.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

1) Scoop: More on BuzzFeed's big sale. When we reported on the deal in Tuesday’s issue, paid members got our exclusive on how BuzzFeed's struggling business may be tied, in part, to its sales team's reluctance to promote content it deems "political" — even when it isn't — for fear of spooking advertisers. Now, new audio we've obtained from BuzzFeed's Tuesday town hall meeting fills in more of the picture around media mogul Byron Allen's takeover of the brand and his forthcoming role as CEO.

Current CEO and co-founder Jonah Peretti, who will step down once the deal closes to become president of BuzzFeed AI, told staffers that BuzzFeed had "a few different deals" they were considering before landing with Byron. That explains why the restructuring plan hasn’t been fully mapped out yet, including specifics on cost reductions and layoffs. When asked directly about when staffers could expect to hear more about those layoff details, Jonah said he'd have more clarity toward the end of the month — which means BuzzFeed staffers now have to spend weeks in limbo waiting to learn their fate.

On Wednesday, Byron told Bloomberg that he plans to turn BuzzFeed into a free-TV super-app combining news, weather and entertainment. The ambition is staggering given how deep in the hole BuzzFeed is right now. It goes without saying that building something like this requires enormous infrastructure, and the competition includes streaming players who've spent years getting there. 

2) Air Mail launches its first fashion newsletter today. Dress Code is a new weekly dispatch from Air Mail Dress Code Editor Rickie De Sole, who joined the team in March. Rickie was previously VP and fashion director at Nordstrom and has held senior fashion roles at Vogue and W Magazine. The newsletter drops every Thursday and will feature style reports, fashion news and shopping recommendations. Fashion legend Lynn Yaeger — those of you who remember her Village Voice days know exactly who she is — will serve as a jewelry correspondent.

Air Mail was built around high-gloss visuals that read like a print magazine on the web, and Dress Code is leaning into that to carve out space in an already crowded newsletter landscape. I asked Rickie what readers can expect:

"In the era of algorithms, product dumps and headlines driven by SEO, I think there is a real hunger for taste and personal style. With Dress Code, readers can expect dispatches from the worlds of fashion and style by some of the industry's most vibrant voices. We'll introduce readers to all the designers, muses, collectors and creative directors you need to know — and none of the ones you don't."

3) In new and exciting moves, The Washington Post hired Soo-Jeong Kang as the newsroom’s new head of visuals. If you read this newsletter regularly you know how critical I’ve been of some of the choices The Post has made lately, but this is an excellent hire. Soo-Jeong’s background is unmatched, especially translating enterprise features into cinematic long and short-form video. She most recently led the visuals team at National Geographic and was also executive director of video at The New Yorker. Before that she spent 13 years at NYT. I met her briefly several years ago and she’s the real deal. This is a level up for The Post — though I’m curious how this new job functions after the entire photo team was laid off in February. 

4) While putting together this week's job roundup, I came across a rather interesting opening: Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour is looking for a ghostwriter to handle all his internal and external communications. That includes writing staff memos that "humanize the CEO" and managing his social media posts to make them "feel spontaneous, insightful, and authentic to their personal brand." And no, the irony is certainly not lost on me that they want this ghost to manufacture authenticity. I've seen more of these types of jobs crop up lately and, in some ways, they do give me a little hope that AI isn't the be-all and end-all of journalism. But what’s really rich is that you'll get to cosplay the CEO but don't make anywhere near the salary of one: the range is $85,000-$105,000 for a full-time New York-based employee. 

5) Bulwark CEO and publisher Sarah Longwell announced this week that the publication has crossed 1 million subscribers — a milestone that felt inevitable given the brand's trajectory. The Bulwark was an early mover in what became the Substack personality-driven newsletter format, and helped define what independent political media could look like in the post-institutional era. An interesting aside I noticed: the top three politics publications on Substack have all been led by women for some time now — Free Press, The Bulwark and Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American. 

6) Roger Lynch has been making the interview rounds these last few days (he has a habit of doing this right before or after a massive layoff). He went on Peter Kafka’s Channels podcast and TBPN, where he said that he’s directed all Condé brands to operate as if search traffic is extinct. That’s a pretty big flip of a switch considering the ambitious traffic goals they all are still expected to hit and how heavily those titles still rely on search. It also doesn’t help that the company keeps shedding people who could help diversify its revenue beyond display advertising (like its events team, which has been the target of layoffs for the last several years). 

Thanks to one of our members who sent us this opinion to debate in Tuesday’s newsletter. Have a media hot take of your own? Email [email protected]. You could be featured in this slot.