However, there is a larger narrative implicated in BuzzFeed News’ collapse, and it inevitably returns to that decision to publish the Steele dossier. BuzzFeed News was a beautiful idea that failed, not just because of the financial model, but because BuzzFeed News itself could never differentiate itself as being more trustworthy than either its parent company or the rest of the media. Why not? Because by publishing the Steele dossier — which we now know to have been partisan bunk concocted and spread with malevolent intent — BuzzFeed immediately rendered itself the least trustworthy news organization in America. I am not kidding about that, unless you consider “Occupy Democrats” to be a news organization. In February 2017, two months after publication of the dossier, they ranked as less trusted than either Breitbart, “social media,” or (this is the punchline) Trump himself.

And by setting the tone for mainstream-media coverage to follow, BuzzFeed News was — this gives me no pleasure to write — literally responsible for helping take down the entire rest of the media with its own reputation.

[The media’s destruction of credibility was hardly the worst of the damage, too. The decision to publish that cooked-up mess of oppo research as legit intel did enormous damage to the country. It’s completely unjustifiable in retrospect — although Ben Smith tried — and it was unjustifiable in the moment, too. — Ed]