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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

As noted in the Vice layoffs thread a week ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23193140), these industry layoffs are a function of revenue pipelines, and it is 100% not related to the type of content or political leanings.

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Except where revenue pipelines are influenced by readership reaction to content quality or political leanings informing that content?

Don't think you can make a statement like "100% not related".

> Don't think you can make a statement like "100% not related".

That's likely true. Would be interesting to see ad revenue figures for a good cross section of the industry.

100% not related is probably too strong, but reports say they've broken readership records and have added ~90,000 subscribers since March. It seems much more plausible that the collapse of the events and ad businesses due to current economic conditions are the driver.

Both can be true. Ad revenues have been hit by COVID for sure, but the remaining ad dollars have gravitated toward higher-quality and more credible news sources. Clickbait and hype merchants like VICE, Buzzfeed, and latterly the Atlantic (the Buzzfeed of the Aspen Institute set) have suffered disproportionately.

Exactly right, I used to be a subscriber and keen reader but lately it has been ridiculous headlines like this one ... https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georg...

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