8 thoughts on “1 Fact about Buzzfeed That May Not Surprise You: It is Shmatteh Journalism – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

  1. How can you contain so much hate to a nation and the people who live and believe it? Why don’t you show all the publisher content that slams Israel, posted by publishers? Oh, yeh – your blog is a one-sided “truth” – so please don’t talk about “quality journalism”.

  2. Thanks for your blog, Richard.
    I always learn something new when I read one of your posts.

    It is amazing how much stuff goes on “under the covers”.

  3. BuzzFeed does this sort of thing for many, many clients with great results compared to banner ads for instance. These clients include such big names as GE, Intel, Virgin Mobile, Target, Buick, British Airways and more. They’re actually pretty forward about it. You can glean more info at http://www.buzzfeed.com/advertise – it’s actually pretty interesting and they talk about how iand why it works through their blog at BuzzFeed U. (same link).

    1. @ pea: It’s entirely different selling a product than selling a cause. People understand that a company would use such a tactic to sell a product. But a non profit organization usually doesn’t use product marketing to “sell” its mission. A country is not an air conditioner or a smartphone. It should be promoted differently. And btw, it won’t work. It may sell cars, but it won’t sell a country that is “damaged goods.”

      1. Of that I have no doubt, and even Adelson says he’s unconvinced that this effort will be able to change minds. But a typical Buzzfeed post is seen and shared by about 75,000 people so one might think that this has the ability to sway minds that don’t have a strong opinion. As for journalistic integrity, this sort of advertorial content is acceptable as long as it is marked as such. I think BuzzFeed can do a better job distinguishing this sort of content from regular content, but anyone with any intelligence can figure all that out pretty quickly. And oddly enough, rethink Israel is sharing a platform with BF Middle East Correspondent Sheera Frenkel ( http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel ) whose reporting has never shied away from being critical of Israel – her post on the Pope’s visit to Bethlehem was viewed nearly 50,000 times. Other Israel related BuzzFeed posts are not exactly fawning in their nature, so at least there’s that attempt at even handedness. RethinkIsrael seems like a vanity project – the images they publish in their twitter and Instagram feeds are years old and taken exclusively from Shutterstock – not exactly what I would call organic… in any case, treating Israel like a brand and divorcing it from religion and politics simply presents an unrealistic view of Israel and only serves to preach to the choir. But I guess Adelson can afford that!

      2. Think of this as any other tourist commercial for countries you can find in CNN or a newspaper. Maybe this “ReThink” organization is selling here a product – a product of educating about Israel or coming to this state to see for yourself how people talk, connect and feel about issues.

        1. In any case, when someone visits a site like BuzzFeed and sees lead articles like “This Is What Happens When Women Look At Their Vaginas For The First Time” or “23 People Who Should Never Be Allowed Near Pizza” – I doubt serious journalism is what they are looking for.

  4. Sushi story was in ynetnews.com, with many comments.

    First of all, Vancouver metro area has 600 sushi restaurants, quite a bit more per capita than Tel-Aviv. Second, only 10% of these places are kosher, which may be related to plans of the Interior Ministry to expel all the foreign chefs by the end of this year. Some commenters complained why are chefs to be expelled, rather than Russian prostitutes. My suspicion is that the latter are either kosher or can be made kosher with rabbinical supervision. The official reason is to free workplaces for the citizens.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *