Copyranter claims that one of the reasons he was fired from Buzzfeed was blowback from advertisers:
Because BuzzFeed had grown so big so fast, they didn’t want some loose cannon highlighting the shitty ads of potential or current big name advertisers. Yeah, that’s a pretty good reason to fire
me. Being a visionary, I brought this point up in my initial interview with Ben Smith. He said, more or less, “You don’t worry about that, that’s my problem.” Boy oh boy did it become his problem. Ben Smith made me delete a post I did on Axe Body Spray’s ads, titled, “The Objectification Of Women By Axe Continues Unabated in 2013” (it was initially called something to the effect of “Axe Body Spray Continues its Contribution to Rape Culture,” but I quickly softened it). Get this: he made me delete it one month after it was posted, due to apparent pressure from Axe’s owner Unilever. How that’s for editorial integrity? Ben Smith also questioned other posts I did knocking major advertisers’ ads (he kept repeating the phrase “punching down”), including the pathetically pandering, irresponsible Nike “Fat Boy” commercial.
Ben responds:
We parted ways with Mark in because his tone and vision are really different from ours. In particular, it’s important to him to make charges — and in one case, imagine dialogue — without the reporting to support them. That’s something he is perhaps doing with me here. Our editorial team operates independently of advertisers, and I’ve never based a decision about reporting on an advertiser’s needs. In fact, if you glance at his page, you’ll see any number of unflattering posts about businesses, some advertisers and some not (and I’m not always in the loop on which is which); in both cases, I took the angry calls and emails and usually didn’t tell him about them, which is what I think an editor is supposed to do.
You can keep up with Copyranter at his new perch at Vice and his own blog.
The Dish 