Publishing's Future

BuzzFeed, a site geared to deliberately keying into web content that has high search volume and viral capacity, got another $20 million from its previous funders. These funds are reportedly earmarked for additional content creation, which includes such stories as "Now you can dress your cat like Kanye West" and "See the new Sandy Hook elementary school."

Existing publishers, most working off of cash flow from existing revenues, once rued the two last internet bubbles that saw major loss leading investment into competitive ventures that were not expected, at least initially, to make money. Facing the dual pressures of declining media prices - in part due to an oversupply of media, and more recently a greater liquidity in that media market - and increased competition for pageviews, several online publishing ventures that relied on new content creation have been laying off staff in order to lessen their overhead costs under the constraints.

But cat stories, and "23 Horrifying foods from the Dollar Store" are expected to see increased coverage.