Old media bought the new-media challengers it once feared for modest sums.

Evidence

Comcast’s investment in BuzzFeed was at last a consummation of the union between the old and the new media such as Microsoft and AOL–Time Warner had once contemplated, though now involving far less money than in those headier days. For comparison’s sake, though, it is worth remarking that The Washington Post, with its forty-seven Pulitzer Prizes, was purchased by Amazon for $250 million in 2013—old media valuations clearly weren’t what they used to be, either. And yet even if BuzzFeed had attracted real dollars, the deal with Comcast nonetheless seemed to diminish the new media in some way. Blogging and other forces that Jeff Jarvis and others had predicted were going to demolish the establishment had eventually yielded to BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed was then bought by old media for what amounted to chump change. So much for all of that. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1074

Categorization

• XREF: This completes the arc traced back in earlier chapters about Microsoft and AOL-Time Warner consolidation attempts — the online-world ambitions of those companies here pay off with BuzzFeed’s cheap acquisition. — connects to: Financialized debt fuels the consolidation wave reshaping media ownership

Broader Connections

• Financialized debt fuels the consolidation wave reshaping media ownership #complicates (0.75)