Missing Chapter: A new series about hidden histories

In the new Vox series Missing Chapter, Vox Senior Producer Ranjani Chakraborty revisits underreported and often overlooked moments from the past to give context to the present. Join her as she covers the histories that are often left out of our textbooks. Our first season tackles stories of racial injustice, political conflicts, even the hidden history of US medical experimentation.

The BuzzFeed bubble bursts: Mass layoffs across digital media

Digital news outlets suffer a round of mass layoffs. Plus, the journalistic life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

BuzzFeed and the digital media bubble

It's been a bad couple of weeks for the digital news industry. More than 1,000 workers, many of them reporters, have lost their jobs at companies like BuzzFeed, Huff Post and Vice.

Just five years ago, these digital news outlets were seen as the future of journalism. But the layoffs suggest that the business model the companies all rely on, click-based advertising revenue, doesn't add up to a profitable bottom line.

Then there's the problematic reliance on Facebook and Google to distribute digital news content.

The two tech giants are eating up the bulk of digital ad revenues - leaving the BuzzFeeds of the world in roughly the same place as newspapers and other legacy news organisations before them - trying to find new models to make their businesses work.