Vivek Ramaswamy’s recent acquisition of a roughly 10% stake in BuzzFeed has raised unexpected questions about the digital media company’s future and sparked speculation about the firebrand conservative’s next move.
Mr. Ramaswamy, an investor who rose to prominence as a potential Republican presidential candidate by promoting conspiracy theories and ardent support for former President Donald Trump, is taking a new right-wing turn at the digital publishing company.
But experts and observers in the technology and media sectors say Ramaswamy’s power will be limited, despite his splashy investment in BuzzFeed to keep his name in the news and relevant in his quest for the Republican vice presidential nomination.
“When you have a crowded field like the Republican presidential primary, you want attention,” said Joanna Dunaway, research director at the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Civil Rights at Syracuse University. “Given the venue, the tone and the timing, it seems like it’s Trump who is trying to grab attention.”
Ramaswamy laid out his vision for BuzzFeed in a fiery letter to the board on Monday, after acquiring an 8.37% stake in the media company over the past three months.
The former Republican candidate said the company has “lost its way” and proposed adding several directors to its board of directors, bringing in creators to make multimedia content and making “massive” cuts to staff.
Ramaswami wrote that the new directors would help bring “intellectual diversity” to the company’s leadership, replacing racial and gender diversity efforts that he, like many conservatives, says are a sign of liberal bias in the media as a whole.
He suggested the company hire prominent right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as content marketers and influencers.
Perhaps most notably, Republicans called on BuzzFeed to admit that it “repeatedly lied about matters of national importance” and “repeated easy, politically convenient narratives to get clicks.”
BuzzFeed executives indicated they had no plans to take up Ramaswamy’s offer.
In a written response to his proposal obtained by The Hill this week, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti dismissed a number of criticisms from conservatives, saying there was a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the company operates.
“I am extremely skeptical that turning BuzzFeed into a platform for incendiary political commentators makes good business sense,” Peretti said in his response, “and I certainly won’t apologize for our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism.”
A representative for Ramaswamy did not respond to questions from The Hill on Thursday about how he plans to wrest control from Peretti and implement his proposed reforms, but hinted that he plans to hold a press conference soon to discuss his investment in the company.
In an interview with Semaphore’s podcast Mixed Signals, Ramaswamy suggested BuzzFeed’s financial troubles might present an opportunity to take the company private.
“This company has more debt than cash. That debt comes due in December of this year. So anyone who thinks Jonah Peretti controls this company just because a piece of paper says he has control of the company is delusional,” he said. “There’s talk of going private. Does that have to do with debt? Does that have to do with how we raise capital, expand or maybe sell some of the business in some other way? I’ve set out my current view in my letter.”
Founded in 2006, BuzzFeed rose to fame using games, quizzes and puzzles to attract millions of loyal daily followers, then invested heavily in news and political reporting ahead of the 2012 election.
The company had a controversial initial public offering in 2021 and has been in tough financial shape since then.
Like many digital publishers, BuzzFeed has made significant cuts to its staff in recent years and experimented with artificial intelligence (AI) for content creation.
BuzzFeed News will officially close in the spring of 2023, having determined that it is “no longer possible” to continue funding its news business “as an independent business,” and cutting 15% of its workforce.
Earlier this year, the company announced plans to lay off another 16% of its workforce and sold Complex, the pop culture media startup it acquired for nearly $300 million in 2021, at a deep discount.
Experts say Ramaswamy’s ideas are unlikely to improve the company’s financial situation.
“BuzzFeed’s biggest problem is that for over a decade they’ve been chasing trends like social, video, affiliate revenue, etc.,” said Sean Griffey, co-founder and CEO of Industry Dive. I wrote to X“Vivec’s suggestion to focus on ‘creators’ and unique voices is just the same thing. Throwing darts in the hopes of magic.”
Ramaswamy owns about 3 million shares in BuzzFeed, making him the second-largest Class A shareholder, but experts and observers say his shares in the company have very limited voting power.
As of December, Peretti and his associates owned 96% of the company’s Class B shares, which have roughly 50 times the voting power of the Class A shares.
That amounts to about 64% of the voting power, and BuzzFeed acknowledges that it limits the ability of other shareholders to influence significant transactions or initiate changes of control.
A growing number of observers predict that Ramaswamy will be ineffectual in his efforts to drag BuzzFeed to the right.
“In this case, a potential proxy fight literally doesn’t matter because you can’t outvote Peretti. So what are you actually doing, Vivec?,” tech columnist Elizabeth Lopatto wrote in The Verge this week. “You picked BuzzFeed because it’s cheap and because you have a historical grudge against the liberal media.”
Some have drawn similarities between what Ramaswamy is proposing to BuzzFeed and the sweeping overhaul of Platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that billionaire Elon Musk made after buying the company in 2022.
Jill Fish, a business law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Hill in an interview that like Musk, Ramaswami is “trying to hire or highlight certain conservative voices at BuzzFeed.”
Conservatives have long railed against the policies and influence of mainstream media and tech companies, and some activist entrepreneurs have started their own alternative-market companies that cater to right-wing clientele.
Since buying Twitter, Musk has lifted various content moderation policies and allowed previously banned individuals, including President Trump and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to return to the platform.
