Good morning! Wednesday's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

BuzzFeed launches new sexual wellness vertical with a branded sex toy — digiday.com

We're not saying that all publishers should get into sex tech. But more should. Whether the pandemic has allowed people more time to play or not, BuzzFeed is definitely experimenting - by launching a branded sex toy and a 'Sex and Love' vertical aimed at establishing BuzzFeed as a go-to destination for sexual wellness content.

As with its foodie-focused play Tasty, Sex and Love is in service of engorging the proportion of ecommerce revenue BuzzFeed receives as advertising revenue comes under pressure. That will allow BuzzFeed to focus on going deep in investigations: as its deputy director of breaking news says: "please support our journalism by going to town on yourself".

It's a smart move for a number of reasons. Sex tech - particularly around the very high-end items - is a growing and lucrative vertical, with burgeoning mainstream attention. Early entry into this space from a general consumer publisher gives BuzzFeed an early mover advantage, and the potential to dominate ecommerce revenue around those items.

When journalism goes bad: a case study from South Africa — gijn.org

A fascinating case study from SA that has implications for everyone in news publishing: "Under financial pressure, the paper prioritized big splash front pages that boosted sales. But as the newsroom fell victim to cost-cutting, its capacity to produce the big weekly splash diminished. And that is when it had to take inside-page stories and sex them up for the front page. And once it had splashed the story, editors felt they had to stand by it — even as their world was crumbling."

Facebook, QAnon and the world's slackening grip on reality — www.theguardian.com

This lengthy read from Alex Hern about the impact that Facebook has had on information dissemination will have you feeling first rage and then helplessness. It's easy to blame Facebook, or to ask if it wasn't there if another similar product would have ridden the same trends, but it's also very apparent that we have lost a shared grip on objective reality. That's very dangerous - particularly for newspapers which purport to report on that reality.

The social media managers are not okay — onezero.medium.com

We've heard a lot about the stress being placed on journalists over the course of the pandemic, about the constant drip of depressing news taking its toll on our psyches. This Medium post makes it plain that social media managers - integral to the success of publications - are under the same pressures.

This week's podcast:

OutThere Editor in Chief Uwern Jong on creating a luxury brand for inclusive travel — voices.media

This week, we hear from Uwern Jong, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of OutThere magazine. He talks to us about the luxury LBGTQ travel brand's journey over the past decade, including how he's grown print readership, and how the pandemic has impacted travel content.

New Conversations episode:

Reach PLC's Terry Hornsby discusses the value of the open internet to advertisers with Lotame's Chris Hogg — voices.media

Over the past two years publishers have rightly been shouting about the power of their first party data. Understandably, that’s led to many becoming protective of the data that underpins this rediscovered strength - but instead of building up walls, many are doubling down on collaboration within the industry.