Jonah and the Whale

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Good evening, and welcome back to In The Room. Tonight, a post-mortem on BuzzFeed News, and the end of an era in digital media.

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Jonah and the Whale

BuzzFeed News and the world it made, and didn’t make, and what happened in between.

DYLAN BYERS

Back in December 2011, less than two months after I started working as a reporter on Ben Smith’s political-media blog at Politico, then one of the scoopiest and most talked-about little shingles in journalism, I got a call from my new boss that left me confused, anxious, and a little pissed. Ben told me that he would be leaving Politico to join BuzzFeed, a still largely untested digital media company whose grand editorial innovation appeared to be allowing sophomoric users to “like,” “dislike” or “WTF” whatever viral content was trending on social media. Upon this institution of millennial self-expression he would ostensibly be erecting a credible...

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FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT