the birthdate of christ is an important date for a lot of people in the world, and i got a response. [laughter] i was trying to be the scientist. it was one of those things where it got a little more response than i expected. [laughter] gabriel: if it makes you feel any better, we had dr. neil degrasse tyson out in the bay area area last week, and he came by the office and i was asking him about an extraordinary exchange he had -- some of you may have seen this -- i think it was last christmas, and he tweeted out that on this day december 25, we celebrate -- i will do a bad job of paraphrasing, but this is the spirit of it, for you fact-checkers -- "on this day, we celebrate a man who was born, and by the time he was 30

revolutionized the world. happy birthday, isaac newton." it turns out people assign very special value to december 25 and he heard an earful about that, but to your question, any tweets that we or others regret -- he certainly was unapologetic in having made that. you know, i think, again, people are provocative in their lives. he is certainly a provocative member of our society, and i think he is probably just as provocative now as he was before twitter, it is just that we all get to experience it along with him. those types of behaviors, i love seeing.

dean lyons: that is part of why the university is such an exciting place. the marketplace for ideas is open, and that is why we love it here so much. gabriel, thank you very much for being here today. gabriel: thank you for having me. [applause] dean lyons: thank you you all for being here. >> retired professional golfer jack nicholas was awarded the congressional gold medal recognized for his public service during a ceremony on capitol hill that included family, friends and congressional leaders. >> it's not the trophy or the triumph, it is the respect that jack's rivals remember most. that is what gives the 1986 masters its size.

to win, jack had to overcome tom watson greg norman and according to some, father time. not a slouch on that list. that day, we were part of something special. something bigger, just as we now are today. it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game and no one has played it better for longer than jack. >> you can see that ceremony later today at 6:30 eastern here on c-span. >> monday night, on the communicators, vincent moscow on the invention of cloud storage and big data and how the government is using it. >> the national security agency

is doing things -- one of the world's largest cloud data centers is in a secure mountain facility in utah. it is doing so because it's surveillance needs require that degree of storage and security. the u.s. government officer ordered government agencies to move to the cloud. as a result, even civilian agencies are turning to cloud services. >> monday night at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span two. buzz feed nude -- buzz feed news executive editor was in a conversation about news in the 21st century.

the editor-in-chief of fisa magazine announced he was stepping down. this discussion was moderated by former media critic for msnbc. this is just over one hour. >> good evening. long gone are the days with two daily doses of news. at night, the families cuddle around for the evening broadcast will stop now in the age of advanced technology and social media, news is reported and constantly consumed. americans are turning to online sources for information on major events and issues in our world. this age of new news is driven by web seats -- websites such as gawker and buzzfeed. although these organizations are young they have a dramatic

impact on how our generation understands the worlds around us. we have a distinguished panel. we have max reed editor-in-chief of gawker. without further ado, please find me in welcoming tonight's panel. [applause] >> a lot of the audience knows organizations but i wanted to start by asking you how you would describe the mission of your organization. let's start with gawker. what do you see as the mission and what function do you play?

>> gawker has been around for 11 years. and we have done a lot of different things. we grew into a place that not only covered breaking news but broke news itself along with cultural coverage. the one thread that has been pulled through the entire history has been our status as a trusted guide to what is bs and what isnot. -- is not. we can take readers i sent them

downn and give them a stiff drink and say actually, that thing thatand '-- that thing the times was telling you is wrong. these are the players behind the scenes and this is what you need to know in order to know the news. tom: it is like the inside story. max: either way, the goal is to make everyone on the inside, to tear down the gatekeepers and to let there be no what journalists are talking about at the bar or when they see each other for lunch. tom: the names are intriguing. gawker and was -- buzzfeed. what is the mission? >> we have been working on our mission statement.

we do not have that yet. we are entertaining people. we try to do all those things in a way that makes people where they are on the web. tom: let me follow up on that. you are known for cat videos. you also have this range of things that goes to watchdog journalism. what role do you see buzzfeed playing in the life of its audience or role?

shani: for me because i work primarily with news is a need trustworthy source of news. that is why we have invested so heavily in news. we have people who love us but they do not have a reason to trust us. we have not presented ourselves as a trustworthy source of news and that is what has been changing the last couple of years. from my perspective, a big part of it is making our readers, helping our readers understand that we are working for them. tom: i wi push on that when we get to revenue modelsll that is interesting. -- i will push on that when we get to revenue models, which is interesting. i am asking you to describe vice. >> as of last night i am no

longer with vice. given some circumstances i will not get into, i was there for a decade and loved so many people there. in order to be here and talk to you guys some stuff happened. tom: you are an individual. describe as you understand it, how does vice fit into this new media ecosystem, what is its mission? rocco: we used to have a rate card, vice is the all-encompassing, all-swallowing whore of babylon.

there is a degree of truth to that. vice is vice, and what it started out as is a free publication in montreal. the newsprint evolved from being about vice, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll and things that make you uncomfortable, and over the years given different voids in the mediasphere and places that were lacking interesting reporting, a lot of it was the will of the founders and everyone that works there, it transitioned somehow into expanding the definition of vice, because vice can be bad politics or eating too much, vice could be pretty much anything in this world and it is a pretty crazy world. they have managed to keep and he

throws that is transferred in two news -- into news and what we are -- accepting as news these days. tom: let me ask about the fact that your organizations have grown. what is the void that you were filling, was it knowing digital technology and digital -- was it data, was it something else, whoever wants to jump at that one? max: we --there is an information arbitrage going on. every journalist who has ever worked in a story has had

information they were not able to put into that story because they had editors who are lawyers who were afraid of it or who were friends of the people who the story was about or otherwise did not want with that in the paper. that is a huge amount of information that a lot of people might be interested in that we have long sort of held the perfect gawker story, you hear from a bar -- at a bar with another journalist and you tell everyone else. because it should be public knowledge. there is nobody really doing that. there are people who did something similar. at various times, certainly tabloids, it is a tabloid-related kind of thing. these mtv-like words like raw and uncensored, there was nobody doing news the way people he actually talk about news and the

way that you swing to your cubicle mate at the office and you say, did you hear about such and such a news story and you talk it through in a way that involves reverend gossip and is not necessarily concerned with the specifics and being able to pin down individual facts, just presenting it to one another and trusting yourself to do it. tom: how about at buzzfeed? it is a data company and a technology company and studies the audience very deeply. what is it -- what is the engine of your growth, would you say? >> from the perspective of news it is -- it comes from the fact that we have pretty traditional backgrounds at a lot of our news leadership.

we started with politics with ben smith, our editor-in-chief. we needed to be on top of breaking news because something we learned during the boston marathon bombing was that people were coming to us to see if we had updated information and that is something that never happened before in large numbers. and that was the point at which we started beefing up the breaking noise -- news operations. that stuff is -- part of it is about being fascinating and interesting and worth telling our readers apart. -- about. just because we have had traditional origins. tom: you attracted the audience and you had money.

what was the engine behind that, that you made your story telly -- storytelling easier and brought audiences to follow or was it because you were built around sharing and mobile? aneri: heart of it is knowing what people like. jonah, our founder, look at how people interact online and has a million stories about how information is shared. they let you put the post of 20 dogs that are disappointed in you and share that with your friends.

there is also this other aspect. and you can build a big audience and build a lot of traffic. you have to be a thing that your audience believes in. >> people share different things publicly than they do in their e-mail. >> more so than transparency. you are being honest about your own experience and that translates to video very well. that has shifted where people feel completely comfortable sharing that stuff on facebook

with their names attached. >> some people do. what is the essence of vice's growth? >> it started as a print product and these big terms, for the sake of argument, immersion isn't immersing yourself in the story, it's transparency about your experience, i don't know exactly what i am getting at but you're being honest about your own experience. i think that translates to video very well. it's interesting to think about how that might translate to social. i'm not sure how that works.

things like snap chat -- it is ephemeral and fleeting. it makes it feel like you have an exclusive on something. i also think it is one thing vice has taken from the old guard is listening to its readers and viewers. those are the people at the end of the day you have to answer to. getting the pulse on that zeitgeist. which is different from the old style. that debate of objectivity versus transparency. and taking things a step further and knowing that everything you do and anything you do is out there probably recorded in some regard and there will be some cultural shifts already happening. you are saying it on an entertainment level. -- seeing it on an entertainment level.

all those things are participatory. tom: we will get into that in a minute. we have been talking about that as a big issue. but before we do, let's get down to one other basic thing so people understand the structure of your organization. traditional american media has been funded by advertising and print and broadcast and radio that was some version of display ads or video ads. what is the revenue model of gawker, and if it is advertising, what kind? >> we are at -- in 2013 we were 85% funded by advertisements something like that for last year. we have a very traditional revenue model.

and the slightly different thing we do from print, we sell sponsored posts which are posts not written by advertisers but approved by advertisers and that are prominently labeled by such and such a post sponsored by newcastle brown ale. you do see this in newspapers and magazines. some -- the other bit that is growing very quickly, it is one of eight sister blogs. we have a host of gadget and tech-focused blogs. it includes an amazon link to that game or gadget that we have an affiliate relationship to amazon. if you purchase we get a portion of the revenue.

50% of the revenue was just through affiliate links below. that is a weirdly growing thing. i am not 100% comfortable with it but we do labeled this stuff. if you purchase this object through our link we receive a portion of the revenue. tom: so it is transaction revenue. how do you feel to know that sponsored content is sponsored content? max: it depends on the person. i am skeptical if people even know -- given that our audience is brand-new to gawker. i am mostly pretty comfortable with the offset. there is a prominent link at the top that said this was sponsored by so-and-so. you cannot comment on them.

advertisers are not interested in letting you comment on stuff they have. [laughter] it strikes me as similar to what friend and newspapers and magazines have done with the ants that are meant to resemble a newspaper but there is also something funny. tom: do you sell banner and pop-up ads? max: we do. tom: i saw john perretti do a presentation and he told the origin tale, i'm sure you have seen this many times and he said, when we started buzzfeed we started with the presumption that the ads, the banner and pop-up ads, he said, we start

with the presumption that banner ads and public ads suck and we're going to invent a new form that people like as much as the rest of our content and really gave a big impetus to what is called sponsored content. is that 100% of your revenue? aneri: i think so. i do not have to think about that in my area as an editor. tom: you have no involvement in creating this sponsored content. max: no. there is a chinese wall. tom: how about at vice? rocco: that worked for so long

so it is church and state and there is a third prong which is technology. technology, you look at ink on paper for so long. technology develops more quickly as we move through time. and you see pop-up ads. those quickly lost their value. you are seeing native advertising. whatever word you want to come up with it. there is going to be new platforms through which content and advertising are distributed. those three prongs in some ways is how i believe vice's revenue model works. i tried not to think about it while i was there. there is definitely like i see about magazines. that is what advertisers want.

you do not want the acura ad next to a pilot on the freeway but you are buying the readership. or the viewership. i think the model add -- at vice is similar. the ultimate goal would not be to do anything that necessarily crosses that line and basically because of our content, we are with brands closely or because -- working with brands closely so they think there is an authenticity there. so you can make a custom campaign for them. there is a different leg there than what is going on with you guys. tom: do you have, if there is some sponsored content, do you think this is terrible, can you

throw a veto up? max: to their credit they want it to be good. they want stuff that hews to a voice that advertisers can be comfortable with. it has some of that gawker or a -- aura. our videogame site had an ad that misspelled it all the way through the ad. it is better not to be able to say take down this horrible sponsored post unless it is legitimately making it more difficult for my, when you buy a big package a wraparound.

at gawker it is a certain kind of trust. tom: as the editors, you are in charge of protecting that trust on some level. does anybody agree? max: in theory. rocco: i was. tom: what is important? max: we have to bring in a certain number of page views per month. we are talking about moving away from that to a new set of metrics. generally this is an incredibly -- the best metric is getting emails from people. it is the closest thing to feeling like i did something

good instead of just achieved whatever gameified or something. aneri: my personal metric is eating someone fired who has been acting badly at their job. we have social lists which is a proprietary calculation of how many people see it, per person who has shared it. getting a sense of how far it is spreading beyond the people that you feed it to. obviously, page views. tom: what is vice thinking about?

rocco: p someone whoutting -- putting someone in jail who was flying. you can get a -- who was lying. of course, page views matter. all the technology we can see, the reader is the most important. also part of our jobs is to not be disingenuous but you do want to eight the men with honey and give them saltwater when they come in. not just cats, but all sorts of stuff. you are not entirely new. tom: let's talk about ethics. do you have an ethics policy? you do not.

max: i have a personal set of ethics. i hope my writers do too, they tend to trap us. the idea is to give us this box we are held accountable against. the executive editor is fond of saying that ethics is a measure of how much scurrilous news your brand is willing to bear. we are in the business of getting information. how much are you willing to get that information in ways that people are not going to like and we're willing to go and do stuff that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with. tom: what would you get fired for? max: not --plagiarism, we fired

a writer for a hint of plagiarism, misrepresenting your work, those kinds of things will get you fired but not stuff like getting the story that passes off an advertiser or something. tom: at buzzfeed, you just wrote one. what is the essence, what is the central concept? aneri: i canvassed people across editorial and it took a few months to put this together. my thought behind it is mostly it needs to make it easy for reporters to do their job. and that to me means giving everybody guidelines.

not necessarily exact answers for how to approach any ethical crisis. how i think, how been things, -- ben thinks. a general sense of how we would approach any situation. making it as easy as possible for people to do their job. tom: you sent me an email about what guidelines should journalists follow when they are dealing with confidential information that was obtained illegally. the sony case being the most classic. are there established guidelines, what should they be and increasingly this question of massive amounts of data that have been obtained by who knows. so that touches on that.

also, the question of this is secondhand, that you did not gather it yourself. i will send you a copy of the elements of journalism as a sort of ethics code. what should be the stance of journalists about illegally obtained but not illegally by you? >> i think the standard is pretty much the same and still is. i've read the ethics code and it is really great. i thought it was spot on. earlier. i think really, the question, is it in the public's interest, no.

really, here is the deal. it is like the way i feel about ethics, morality is no longer a religious thing. it is no longer something your mom teaches you. if you lie, you died. it is going to come out and be far worse, whatever's going on right now, let's say. you can see how bad things can get. that to me is the most simple policy. how do go through gigabytes and terabytes of information and not look at these things which are illegally obtained. hackers in this case, an agenda putting certain things back together.

>> maybe the best way to say it is every writer is different and every editor. there are many factors you are weighing. privacy interests. >> by public interest, is it interesting? >> maybe it is the same thing. public entertainment, public good. sony is an interesting example. to think about stuff like celebrity gossip as not in the public interest, which i disagree with. sony in particular is a slamdunk argument for me. we are talking about the actual business workings of a multibillion dollar company having trouble right now at

actually instrumental to a set of this is decisions being made by the company. it is celebrity gossip. angelina jolie sony motion pictures entertainment. we published in part because it was a fantastic story with hollywood quality expletives. it was about a famous disaster of a movie. steve jobs movie, and unbelievable disaster for a movie. these are indeed private e-mails that unquestionably survey public interest. versus social security numbers of thousands of employees. there is no case you could make, and no reason we would not want to publish those. it did not come up. >> we found the e-mails about

obama's suppose it favorite movies, which happened to star black people. 12 years a slave. [laughter] that is actually news in that we are at a moment where everyone is looking at the whiteness of the oscar nominees, the fact that black directors are having trouble being green lit. jokey racism all plays into decisions being made in the films we are seeing. >> would you say your all in the german just journalism business? >> yes. [laughter] >> that was a question i wanted to ask, not based on the answer people had given.

there is a lot of new media that resists that word that thinks, no, that is something old and we are inventing something new. >> the founder used to say, we are not journalists but we might do journalism mess deadly. we accidentally became journalists. >> what made you become journalists? >> it became clear what we were doing with journalism, we all just believed gossip is -- gossip business. it became clear, if that is the case, gossiping is an act of journalism. we have been breaking news for so long and doing reporting for so long, it seems silly to keep up the appearance of being a media pirate that hated journalism. >> we will go to the audience in a minute. two quick questions, what is the biggest mistake your organization has made so far?

[laughter] >> i can start. >> i will give you a pass, rocco. >> one of the biggest mistakes we made was reported on astutely. in the early days of buzz feed a content laboratory, this predated me and my editor in chief. a lot of bizarre and not up to par posts on the site. someone decided to delete under it being predating our journalism. i think we should not have deleted those posts.

deleting something is the fastest way to get caught doing something, even if it is not as down and dirty as someone might suggest. >> startups are supposed to learn from their failures. what did you learn? >> from a journalistic point of view we kept our foot to the pedal for too long, probably 18 months too long. facebook recently changed the way it serves up stories to people on their feeds, which has meant, as all of us have profited a great deal from, they get all kinds of insane numbers of people reading them without much effort or quality at all. we continue to believe for the most part that quality and

popularity are, if not identical, they closely put together. facebook changed that dynamic that a couple of years ago we at the very least would measure that quality. >> what are the biggest mistakes new media are making generally? >> not being transparent to your readers at all times is the biggest mistake you could make in this game and that is all i will say. >> when you say transparent does that mean about the story your personal politics, your intentions? that is a major concept in my

books, and my view, that is really what objectivity is here but what do you mean? >> getting back to church state tech this applies to a lot of places, experimental business models. places make mistakes. if you say you speak the truth you have to be able to do that unfettered. it sounds like you can talk smack on your boss. >> we will go on the green room later and max can put it on later. the last question would be,

where do you see this being in five years? what do you see news looking like in five years? >> i do not like to make predictions. >> but you have to make business plans. go ahead. >> true. as a traditional journalist, i don't perceive the fundamentals changing very much, in terms of what is good and how to report.

beyond that, i don't know. tom: we know we are going to mobile. shani: a majority of our readership comes from mobile. i think about 60%. tom: is that changing the way you write stories? shani: it is fun with our tech team. they are able to give us a preview of what the post will look like on mobile. it has been called the mobile preview. because we are sitting at computers all day, that is not what most people are seen. to see what people are actually consuming in a buzzfeed post is useful. tom: and better understanding the audienece's behavior? shani: yes, we like to know what they're thinking. tom: leading or following? shani: it is important to know what kind of couple you want to have a threesome with. [laughter] obviously they should tell us if they want. rocco: i hope the future is

smellovision and holograms. max: i think shani is right. anyone that thinks they know what the content industry looks like 18 months from now is lying to you. building trust with your regulars and your publication, the quality of the stories you are bringing out, if you have a fantastic tech team as buzzfeed buzzfeed does, to deliver stories in a way that readers will appreciate. the hope is that nothing will change so much that it will push publications out of business. i don't know, either not the business guy. -- i am not the business guy. tom: how much of your traffic comes directly to the page versus social? rocco: ours is about 30% -- max: ours is about 30% facebook, 1/3rd called dark. tom: how about at buzzfeed? shani: i cannot tell you off the top of my head. primarily facebook followed by pinterest and twitter. tom: what about vice? rocco: it follows the same maybe minus pinterest. [laughter]

tom: how important is your understanding facebook's mysterious algorithm to know what will succeed in their delivery? shani: i think you can't obsess about it because it is constantly. -- it changes constantly. there is not one outgrow them, there are 40 and they are tweaking them constantly. -- there is not one formula. what will get me traffic today over what people actually care about -- tom: you don't focus on that intermediary. shani: yeah. tom: in an increasingly crowded marketplace, one argument could be made -- and you have all talked about this -- you have gravitated towards being more trustworthy. you have passed journalism. do you think that your brand is going to migrate towards becoming more serious, more trustworthy because that will serve the business model? rocco: trustworthy is a funny

word. i want to torture it to mean something that it doesn't. which is to say, i want people to trust that we are being honest with them, not necessarily that what we are writing is true, or that we are 100% positive it is true. we are a gossip rag, and we embrace that and publish gossip. the hope is that we have the integrity and identity that allows people to recognize that without them making the judgment about the stuff we are presenting based on the transparency and so on. the only thing you can rely on is your name, and if so, you want to make sure it is taken seriously, or at least understood. tom: it is a sort of 21st century tabloid. and buzzfeed? shani: yeah, but not too serious. tom: don't take yourself too seriously.

journalists to be funny because they deal with all kinds of stuff. some serious issues need to be addressed that were not addressed earlier. so i think it is a trend, if you will. tom: our trend is to go to the audience. >> thank you so much for coming. [indiscernible] tom: good question. max: i would say i believe that essentially. i believe that rocco is good at his job. what we are talking about his business models. we have a history of reporting on vice and people coming into stories and telling us that they are only reporting on vice because we are jealous. everybody is jealous of advice they have a lot of money. [laughter] it is important that readers

reckon i'd we're doing the reporting because we believe those stories to be important. tom: let's stick to one question per person. >> hi, thank you all for coming. you will consider yourself to be in the journals in business, but also you work for websites with a lot of people viewing your articles. how do you balance publishing quality content that is important, but also being quick based? shani: we don't do quick base. tom: remember, you're in the trustworthy business. shani: not every story needs to get the same amount of traffic. that is the most important thing to understand. for us, for me, what i think about most is this story reading the people in needs to reach. -- it needs to reach.

if we are doing a story on a chronic fatigue syndrome and it goes to 60,000 people, and then you go to a quiz on moments that historic your community and it goes to 400 million people, that is okay. the people that read the story on chronic fatigue syndrome are sending you e-mails and asking if they can translate it into their journals. there are so many metrics we can measure success on that thinking about everything as traffic is detrimental. but it is also bad for business. tom: do you guys have expectations about how well a certain kind of story should do? worse that more refined -- or is that more refined? shani: i have a general idea depending what a success looks like. but we don't have traffic goals. tom: how about at vice or gakwer?

rocco: the metric is quality and it needs to be determined somehow. you're doing this job in some regard, you can say that one piece is going to go nuts or get on reddit or something. and sometimes i think, this is a shitty story. but that is our job, to predict that. there are other pieces, trying to be dispassionate about it. people will e-mail you about the stories, and if the right person reads it, maybe one person does change. and real-world changes the real metric. -- is the real metric.

shani: we got a senior nsa official fired because of a conflict of interest. that didn't go wide on facebook by any means. i would take that almost any day.

tom: thank you. >> hi, thank you for coming. this is been a very entertaining event. [laughter] tom: a little bit of seriousness. >> my question is -- do you think that someone reading exquisitely as a media like her companies could be considered fully informed? follow-up to that would be, do you think your readers have the perception of being fully

informed if they are only getting your media? rocco: i do think there is any such thing as fully informed obviously. max: if you read facebook or gawker, i can see yourself being very well informed. shani: i will steal this for my boss, who always says people think of this middleground reader who reads the newspaper every day. he is a little bit interested about the latest incident, and a bit interested in the rocket going to space, and wants to read the paper to get an anchor mental update on these things. -- to get an incremental update on the things. i don't think that kind of person actually exist. rocco: i will say people are more complex than marketing department or editorial deferments think. -- editorial departments think. >> thanks for coming. buzzfeed, gawker, and vice all have sister sites or subsections. if you could add a sister site or remove one, which one or why? shani: from each other's?

[laughter] >> it's open. max: something we do well, and could be done better his coverage of internet culture. -- is coverage of internet culture. we call it weird internet, but it is not even weird, it is just to let. -- it is just internet gizmodo does a bit of it. it is incredibly important and influential. >> i really to find a way to tell climate stories in a way that is readable and compelling. it is just hard. the market for climate journalist has been so diminished in the last 10 years. there is hardly anybody doing it. the people who are doing it are

doing worthy, but not readable work. tom: can i ask a related question? traditional newsrooms, as they have shrunk, have largely given up on diversity pulls. what we have done in research at api, the digital divide in terms of minority publishing's not being connected to the internet, that problem may have been solved by wireless. the other problem of digital

this new diversity of content, also has not happened. there is a growing concern -- and now we see in technology there is even gender diversity issues. do you see this as a major concern? if the goal is to get to scale and brand as fast as possible, those broad appeal categories are not going to be served? rocco: if you can successfully use some of that to push forth stuff that people might not read otherwise, it balances out. in terms of diversity in tracking using, that is a tough

dilemma. -- diversity in news media. they can choose. they cross over. the way things are going categories, whatever you want to call them, sister sites. as long as there is that, it only serves the reader more. >> hi, my question is merely for primarily for shani. you said you wanted to remodel buzzfeed. maybe getting rid of cats. shani: not at all, i love those things. >> do think that may reduce the seriousness? i haven't read articles on for ferguson and op-ed pieces that i appreciate. -- i have read articles on ferguson. but also the less academic type posts, to be gentle. pictures of cats, those are fun, but do you see those as being potentially harmful or detracting? shani: i genuinely do not.

i think it is great and love it. i think most people are not reading buzzfeed as a whole. most people are reading the pieces that cross their facebook page. the thing that we have found through doing research of our users. we like to research what our users think. we felt that people who find out that we do serious news, their estimation of us shoots up in a way that is fascinating, because they just did not know. the answer is not to do less of the fun stuff, but to do more of the news and make it clear that is what we do. they don't think less of us because we have some fun quizzes. >> okay. thanks. >> what is your approach to

international news, and have you picked people will consume and learn from it? rocco, vice news has had such strong conflict in the past, but also with the future of buzzfeed news? rocco: i can't speak to vice n ews particularly now. for we had a "saving south sudan" issue. 30,000 word story about why he was a failed state. i would love to bring attention to issues like that. maybe i didn't answer the.

question i would love to do -- maybe i did not answer the previous question. keep building on the story. how does it effect me? that is an important thing. we can say, this is how it affects you -- this is the oil incident, follow the money trail. that can be in it shooting thing, and i hope that is the way technology and news go. shani: i'm not quite sure what your specific question was about those. >> i'm just curious about buzzfeed's approach to international news will go forward?

shani: there are two fronts in which we do international news. one is our foreign correspondents. we have people based in nairobi, the border of turkey. we are hiring a correspondent in nigeria. we have somebody in ukraine. we have people scattered about just sending dispatches in a very traditional way. we are also expanding in terms of our bureaus it other countries. we have a london bureau. they are becoming a new source for people in the uk. they are doing news and fun stuff and entertainment for the u.k..

we also are looking to expand in brazil, sydney, and other places like that. >> hi. so your organizations have been around almost sense the beginning of communities that have been formed and started on the internet. your websites are very entrenched in those kinds of committees and were built around the same time. -- kinds of communities and were built around the same time. you have to contend with groups coming in this new edge while still being this new media that was born from the internet aside from vice, which started in print, but came to the internet. how do you do with those communities coming to the internet and more eestnet the old media -- and more based with the old print media compared to the newcomers? max: that is an interesting

question, and one i don't think about much. i think my audience is one young enough -- we are not an appealing place to people, as my parents are fond of telling me. [laughter] in that sense, we don't think about them much at all. we aren't generally a publication largely by people under the age of 40. entirely under the age of 40. we think about news from the perspective people that age, we write it with that perspective. it is not an accent that our audience is young. i don't know if that answers your questions. >> kind of. [laughter] >> i haven't thought much about people who are not internet age coming to our website. we do wide variety of things. there are things that will appeal to them, and things that will not appeal to the middle. hopefully the right things find them. [laughter] tom: do you care less? if the reader less important if they are 60?

to your advertisers, or to you? rocco: to advertisers, probably. shani: i have no idea. max: i don't think about our demographics much. it is about who we are at this moment in the web more than anything else. i am a bit more afraid of teens who are vigor in number -- bigger in number don't care about as much because we are not instagram or snapchat. that is a vigor business problem -- that is a bigger business

problem for us. >> building on that idea of community. as the founder of our company would be pleased to hear you say that. just as we are meant to be holding those in power accountable, readers hold of accountable on the pages, the best case scenario is that we have vibrant, intelligent commenters who can add context and augment the article. the problem is, as anyone who

has done this, in order to have a productive and worthwhile commenting community or rent -- really any kind of comedy community, to remind people not to just fall back onhorrible -- the problem is i think anyone who has done this long enough