Meet the Soon-To-Be Media Mogul Leading Buzzfeed’s Shift To Mobile

About five years ago, Stacy-Marie Ishmael was asked an all-too familiar question in an interview: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

At the time, Ishmael was a reporter at The Financial Times, covering dense topics like emerging markets. The world of traditional journalism, like the economy, was in tumult: Newspaper revenue was on a steep decline and relatively new entrants like The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed were beginning to steal audiences left and right.

“None of the jobs that I have done in the past five years really existed before I did them or really existed before the organization that I was working for created them,” she told the reporter. “I am pretty sure that in the next five years it will be the same.”

Ishmael’s answer couldn’t have been more poignant. Now the managing editor for mobile at Buzzfeed News, she has created a new and integral role for herself within the media powerhouse. As more and more news junkies move to reading on mobile instead of their desktops, Ishmael is responsible for how Buzzfeed will meet them there. In just a few months, the Trinidad native developed a standalone news application that is now in the hands of iPhone users. The day the app went live in June, a man killed a dozen people in Charleston, South Carolina, putting both Ishmael and her app to the test as it handled a stream of breaking news.

In an interview with LinkedIn, Ishmael discussed her career, the future of journalism and what news of mobile should really look like.

Edited Excerpts:

Caroline Fairchild: What made you want to work at Buzzfeed?

Stacy-Marie Ishmael: The people and the quality of the journalism they were producing. I had been following the journalism that the team was doing for a very long time and I was impressed by the caliber of the people they were attracting. For my specific role, when Ben Smith [Buzzfeed’s Editor-In-Chief] was pitching me on it, I was helping him hire someone else. He then asked me if I knew of anyone who would be interested in leading a mobile team for us and running a mobile app. I sent him a bunch of names and he sent me back an email a few days later asking if I would be interested. (Laughs)

I loved my job at The Financial Times, but then I started thinking about it. One thing that Buzzfeed has that most other media organizations of their age don’t have is the luxury of scale and the ability to really have an impact on huge numbers of people all around the world.

CF: What do you say when people talk about all the cat videos?

SMI: Our investigative editor once said to me, 'I love that we can have a huge groundbreaking investigative story and right next to it is [a post about] cats in tiny hats.' That is a really important thing, which people can’t seem to grasp. No one should be ashamed of producing work that is funny and entertaining the same way that our investigation team is legitimately making a difference through the work that they do. I think both of those are worthwhile pursuits and I really appreciate that I work in an environment that values those things.

We are investing very heavily in Buzzfeed News. Buzzfeed as a brand is about nine years old and our news team is about three years old. When people talk about the perception of Buzzfeed shifting, for too long the perception of Buzzfeed has been one of frivolity and equating cat videos with being frivolous. One of the things that really attracted me to Buzzfeed was this uncynical pursuit of making a difference in people’s lives whether that is by news and investigations or helping people make better decisions with health and fitness.  

CF: How is Buzzfeed thinking differently about news on mobile?

SMI: News on mobile isn’t just about responsive design or how to take something you would have sent as a tweet or a mail alert and sending that as a push notification. News on mobile is about being acutely aware that you are operating in a different context, often where people have higher demand, more distractions and lower thresholds of attention. You are more actively competing with [all the other things] people can do with a mobile device. When you start with that premise, you come up with a different series of product and editorial decisions.

CF: So, how is your news app different?

SMI: When we decided to do a news app, one of the first thing we had to figure out was how to present Buzzfeed news stories more effectively on smaller screens. More effectively on a smaller screen doesn’t mean a story has to be shorter. We are not arguing that no one reads long form on mobile, but it does mean being aware that someone might be in a more time-pressed situation on mobile. They might be distracted. You can’t assume you have their full attention. My team came up with something we’re calling native formats. Basically, what can fit on one screen that gives somebody what they they need to know about what is going on around the world?... We are trying to figure out what we are calling the atomic universe of the story on mobile. 

CF: How are your growing in your career at Buzzfeed?

SMI: [I have to be] extraordinarily empathetic at an individual level and organizationally. Whenever you are building something from scratch, every single decision you make is even more consequential. Saying you are going to do iOS first and Android second is a huge decision. The first five people that you hire, that is a huge decision for what the rest of your team is going to look like. [You have] to understand that when you are working in an intense news environment, everything you do has consequences not just for you, not just for your team, but also for everyone else involved… That is something that I have to balance every day and if I am heads down getting work done every day, I can miss what is going on around me.

CF: Is scaling Buzzfeed News a top priority?

SMI: From a mobile context, let’s say we have decent penetration in the U.S. and western Europe once we launch this app. I know that until I am on Android, we will have much lower rates of penetration in most emerging markets. That means if I really want to help Buzzfeed get read by more people in more places, what is our Android strategy? Or, how do we make sure the app isn’t too data intensive? When I go back to Trinidad to visit my mom, my data connection gets downgraded to Edge. That’s lower than 2G and most of the apps on the phone became unusable. The only thing that works is WhatsApp. I can’t just design something that works well for people with an iPhone and who are constantly connected to the Internet all the time. I think about scaling in terms of recognizing the needs that different audiences have and making sure that the products we are creating are designed to deliver excellent journalism in the ways that people have available to them.

CF: What in your mind are the most important skills for journalists today?

SMI: Don’t get hung up on what your specific job title should be or who you think you should work for. The pace of change is so intense that what you have to be really good at is having the base level of competence. If you want to be a reporter, you need to know how to make phone calls, fact check and verify. It is about cultivating a mindset of being flexible, creative and willing to write your own job description if it comes to that. I am not saying that is fun. I think right now one of the challenges of the job market is how precarious it is for some people. One day you are at a well-funded startup or media organization, but then there is so much upheaval and consolidation and things completely change. That can be psychologically stressful, so you have to be able to tell yourself that this isn’t about you, it is about systemic and cyclical change. How you can adapt to that is almost the most important thing.

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For more posts from LinkedIn's New Economy Editor Caroline Fairchild, click the follow button at the top of this post and follow her on Twitter here.