"Definitive Oral History of BuzzFeed News 2012-2023" recounts the rise and fall of BuzzFeed News. Launched in 2012, BuzzFeed News expanded rapidly, hiring numerous staff, opening international offices, producing podcasts and shows, and winning a Pulitzer Prize. However, it later faced challenges, shuttering offices, laying off employees, and eventually shutting down for good on May 5th, 2023.
BuzzFeed News' former tech reporter Katie Notopoulos:
…Hundreds of people worked here over the years and made this place what it was — this oral history is an incomplete account of what made this place both extraordinary and exasperating. There are so many stories and people missing, either because it got too long, we ran out of time, or we had to delete some of the really juicy stuff. (Testimonials have been edited for length and clarity.)
If your interest is an analysis of the business forces that led to this moment, there are plenty of thorough and smart assessments (our former editor-in-chief just wrote a whole book, awkwardly released the same week we were told we needed to close, about how digital media was doomed.) We wanted to make this oral history so that the final word on BuzzFeed News (literally, the last thing to be published on our site) would come from the people who worked here...
Previously: BuzzFeed discloses use of AI to write stories
