Jonah Peretti is sitting at a table and scrolling through his iPhone. It's what most of us do these days when we're waiting for someone. And it's how millions of people consume his media company's content.
I'm a couple of minutes late for my lunch interview with the BuzzFeed chief executive officer, after placing too much faith in Sydney's traffic. We meet at The Bridge Room, just a couple of blocks from the viral content powerhouse's Sydney set-up. It's a good time to be interviewing Peretti. His company – which is eyeing a potential sharemarket listing, and only days earlier was sued for defamation – is entering a critical phase. So too, it feels, is the very medium upon which it was founded.
"There was a utopian moment when everyone involved in the internet thought: 'Everyone gets connected, more voices are represented, people can communicate with anyone else in the world'; that 'It will lead to rainbows and harmony and nothing but wonderful [and] positive things'," says Peretti. "Now we are seeing that just like any utopian vision, it's more complicated."
Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, Peretti's aesthetic is more start-up founder than media mogul, which jibes with his description of BuzzFeed as a "tech-driven media company". Originally conceived as a kind of aggregator that used technology, not humans, to surface content trending on the internet – think cute animals – it now employs 1500 people around the world, and claims to generate 8 billion views each month for the lists, quizzes and videos it produces.
The unassuming 43-year-old, who looks a bit younger than that, is considered one of the internet's sharpest minds. So how did he develop such an innate sense for the web's inner workings? "I think it's just because I had a crush on the internet," he says. "When you have a crush you want to learn more, you are super curious, and it leads to an actual deep relationship sometimes. With the internet, I feel like I am still learning."
The Nike order
Peretti famously got hooked on the potential of the internet as a graduate student at MIT, and attempted to order shoes from Nike with the custom ID of "sweatshop". Nike refused, Peretti forwarded the correspondence with the shoe giant to some friends, and from there the email ended up in the in boxes of millions of people. This was in 2001, mind you, when Facebook – the primary driver of viral content today – did not exist and Google was in its infancy.
"It was before anyone thought of making things go viral. I was just trying to figure out, 'How did that happen? How did it even work?' It used to be that to reach big audiences you needed a newspaper or a broadcast pipe. How could it be that a student with no connections in media could reach millions of people? What's that about?"
The search for an answer ultimately led to a glittering career in digital media. Peretti helped found Huffington Post, one of the biggest sites to emerge from the blog era, where he served as chief technology officer. In 2006, while still at HuffPost, he started BuzzFeed as a side project. More than a decade later it's valued at $US1.7 billion ($2.2 billion) by its investors, which include a prominent venture capital firm backed by Australia's Future Fund, and media giant NBC. An initial public offering could be on the cards as soon as next year.
Peretti is on his first visit to Australia, to catch up with the company's Sydney staff and to deliver a speech at the Vivid Ideas Festival. We're getting hungry. I suggest he start with the Sydney rock oysters, because we're in Sydney (although the waiter informs us they're from Tathra). I opt for the scallops. We're briefly interrupted as an acquaintance of Peretti seated nearby says "Hi". "I know a lot of people in Sydney," Peretti jokes.
It is clear that while the internet has changed lately, and for the worse with its darker side rising to the fore, his crush endures. "I still feel very positive about the internet. I think there is work to be done and there will be improvements. The internet will get better at rooting out fake news, the internet will get better at policing hate speech and abuse and things like that. But it won't be a straight line path to a perfect global utopia."
The question is, how?
No backing down
Just days before our meeting, BuzzFeed was sued by a group of Russian businessmen for publishing a dossier that contained, among other things, incendiary but unverifiable (and denied) claims about US President Donald Trump. "There's a long history of people suing media companies to try and shut them up and intimidate them," says Peretti.
At this stage, he's not backing down.
BuzzFeed is still primarily known for lighthearted and low-brow viral content, such as a video of an exploding watermelon or a photo of an optical illusory dress of indistinguishable hue, but it set up a serious journalism operation nearly five years ago. The decision to publish the dossier in January, alleging links between Trump and Russia (as well as strongly denied sexual conduct) was probably its biggest story to date.
The move was criticised by large sections of the US media establishment, but Peretti remains unrepentant. "Once it was clear," he says "that this document was being referenced by [former US senator] Harry Reid, the president-elect had been briefed on it, people were making decisions based on it, CNN was reporting on the existence of the document, at that point we felt the public should at least know what's in that document."
In its story, BuzzFeed made it clear that the documents contained errors, as well as some claims it could not verify. To Peretti, the reaction was telling.
"The public was so appreciative that we published it," he says, as he enjoys the sourdough rye we've been offered. " There is a sense the media wants to cling to this gatekeeper role. The gatekeeper role that a lot of legacy media companies fight to maintain erodes trust in the media, and makes people think, 'They're hiding stuff from me'.
"There has to be a synthesis between what's great about the internet and what's great about traditional journalistic values."
Media's fundamental problem
As much of the traditional publishing industry frets about Google and Facebook's dominance of the digital ad market, Peretti argues it has a much more fundamental problem to contend with. Trust. Or more accurately, a lack thereof.
"The thing that's a much larger issue is, the media will blame Facebook or the internet on Trump being able to win. But the truth, is trust in media was at an all time low in the States, much worse than in Australia. Almost every newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton and it had no effect.
"Then, it's like, after the election the media says 'Trump is calling everything fake news! And undermining trust in the media! ' The truth is, the lack of trust in the media wasn't something that Trump caused. He was an effect of that."
Peretti made significant headlines himself during the election campaign when he claimed Ivanka Trump had used some, how do we put this, vulgar language (a claim she strongly denied).
Surprised Ivanka would be shocked by lewd language. I met her once & she casually said: "I've never seen a mulatto cock, but I'd like to!" https://t.co/WrgCoM0MGK
— Jonah Peretti (@peretti) October 19, 2016
"A good friend of mine, who was actually an Aussie, was dating someone who went to school with her, and I was out with my friend, my mate," he says of his meeting with the heiress in 2008. "It was fairly impulsive. I was just reading on Twitter that she was shocked at her dad's language and I was like 'What is wrong with you? The one time I've met you, you were saying things that, I don't really know people who would use that language!' "
"Yeah, these are great oysters" he says and I'm relieved, having suggested them sight unseen. The scallops were not bad, either. We're on to our mains and have both chosen trout, he of the ocean and I of the coral variety.
Running a media company in the age of Trump is "unpredictable and a little bit exhausting", he says. "Our reporters are working longer hours and harder than ever before, but with a real sense of purpose, because clearly a lot of unprecedented things are happening that need the attention of the press."
The Trump effect
The Trump era seems to have provided a boost for the traditional media industry. The New York Times and The Washington Post have broken traffic records and experienced an uplift in subscriptions. This seems mostly due to the old-fashioned journalistic values of shoe-leather reporting and scoops, more than anything else.
Peretti agrees there is hope for legacy media companies that successfully embrace the internet. "I think from this era there will be a few companies that will be enduring … and hopefully we will be one," he says. "There will be traditional media companies that find their way to digital and be strong. The Washington Post is trying to do that, they have a deep-pocketed new owner who is very smart and understands the internet. The New York Times has a great brand and has been able to grow a lot of digital revenue."
You get the sense he has spent a lot of time thinking about things like this. "In media history, there are examples," he says, of companies making such a transition. "CBS was really a radio powerhouse and they shifted to be a TV powerhouse, so there may be some examples of that."
The interview has gone well beyond the time I was allotted. But an offer of dessert and coffee seems appealing. Seeking something without dairy, Peretti orders the pear salad and espresso. I take a punt on the whipped black sesame dish, not knowing what to expect, and a piccolo.
We shift to a discussion about real life. Peretti recently relocated from New York to Los Angeles, where BuzzFeed's fastest-growing and most lucrative operations in video are primarily based. The move was largely driven by his wife's desire to escape the cold of New York, he says. He and his wife have twin sons. They're now closer to extended family; Peretti lives just a couple of blocks away from his sister, Chelsea, a well-known comedian who stars on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Funny family
Is there a reason why the Peretti siblings are such funny people, I ask? "The deep pain of our early childhood," he jokes. "Our dad" – a criminal defence lawyer and painter – "is a really funny guy, although not that social so no one perceived him as funny."
In seriousness, he thinks his dyslexia as a child might have ignited his creative spark. "Doing art was a way to communicate," he says. "I would build clay monsters, and have long conversations, because verbally, I was able to engage, but reading and writing came late." Throughout his career he has "always been obsessed with the intersection of art and science, of tech and humanities".
The conversation moves on to what might come next for the ever-changing media business.
"We have done some experiments with VR [virtual reality] but we are a pop culture, pop media entity, so investing a lot in VR does not make sense," he says. "In VR, the battles are all in the underlying technology and the software, the distribution … not on the content layer. As soon as it develops more, and has more usage, we will be able to take our way of thinking about content to a platform that's ready for mass adoption; that's when it becomes interesting to us."
Tenacious growth
Is he surprised at what BuzzFeed has become?
"I feel like as we got bigger and started to grow, I had felt like I had more responsibility to the team and 'Somebody was going to do this, so why not us?'," he says.
"Then, it always just to me felt like if you could get 7 per cent bigger every month, then you are doubling every year. And if you are doubling every year, then you will be 10 times bigger in a few years. You don't have to be crazily ambitious and arrogant to think you can build something big. You just have to be tenacious … and work at it every month, and every year, and get a little bit better."
Peretti's minder shows up. He's late for his next meeting, so I ask for the bill and we wrap things up.
"We look back on it and think 'Whoa! How did we build this company with people all around the world?', over 1500 now. But it happened by taking it one day at a time."
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The Bridge Room,
44 Bridge Street, Sydney
2x3 courses lunch special, $110 each
Six oysters, shallot, red wine vinegar, white miso dressing, chives
Steamed scallop pudding, biltong, sweet corn, abalone, butter sauce, mushroom powder
Ocean trout, silken eggplant, sesame, puffed rice, organic soy sauce, grilled rock kelp
Coral trout in butter, chinkiang black vinegar, clams, caterpillar mushrooms, ginger, aged pancetta
Burnt caramel cream, candied packham pear salad, pistachio, mint, raisins, pedro ximenez
Whipped black sesame, toasted sesame powder, melon, puffed black rice, coconut sugar
1 still water, $11
1 piccolo, $7
1 espresso, $7
Total: $245
