BuzzFeed's fire sale to Byron Allen marks the end of an era Chief Correspondent covering media and technology Byron Allen wanted to buy Paramount. Now he's buying a controlling stake in BuzzFeed. Paras Griffin/Getty Images Go back in time to 2016: BuzzFeed, Vice Media, and Vox Media are supposed to be the future of media. Now back to present tense: Vice filed for Chapter 11, Vox is breaking up, and BuzzFeed just sold itself for a fraction of its former value. Meanwhile, many of the companies the digital upstarts were supposed to replace — big publishers and TV companies — are still here. In the past, BuzzFeed was the future of media. But in 2026, BuzzFeed looks just about done. In March, the digital publisher told investors it was running out of money and was looking for "strategic options." On Monday, it announced the option it settled on: It will sell a majority stake to media entrepreneur Byron Allen for $120 million . We can talk about the deal, slated to close later this month, in a minute.…