Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it’s more important to you than anything else in your life—family, friends, social life, whatever.Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings • Offering advice to young journalists in a Reddit thread last year. Hastings, 33, died in a car crash on Tuesday morning. Despite his young age, he left a fairly significant mark on the journalism world, scoring a 2010 Rolling Stone interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in which the then-Commander of U.S. and NATO Coalition Forces in Afghanistan spoke negatively of White House staff. Hastings’ report sent shockwaves through Washington, leading to McChrystal’s firing before the report was even officially published. While McChrystal was eventually cleared of wrongdoing in the case, Rolling Stone stood behind Hastings’ article. Hastings’ death led many journalists to leave statements of remorse in the wake of the news, including his editor, Ben Smith, who said in a statement that “He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold.” (reddit thread via Twitter user @nbj914)
Some moron thinks Buzzfeed owes him $3.6M for using this photo on their site.
I need to take more terrible photos that Buzzfeed is interested in more often, apparently.
In its first shot against the bow against the Business Insider audience, BuzzFeed literally writes an article that’s so fetch. Move over Financial Times, BF is gunning for your readership.
CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker’s facelift at the cable news network continues with a social media initiative designed to capitalize on the network’s vast video archive.
Gotta give credit to Jeff Zucker. This is actually a good idea. Though the old-journalism hand-wringing that’s about to happen over the combined powers of CNN and Buzzfeed is going to be fun to watch.
Before I started at BuzzFeed, I worked at My Place Pizza, a Newtown staple, from the age of 15 through 22. On a typical Friday, by far the busiest night of the week, we made 300-400 pies. I can’t help wonder how many pizzas My Place made this past Friday night.
I was there on September 11, 2001, and making pizzas proved to be an effective way to take my mind off what was happening 50 miles away. On Friday morning, working at a job that requires me to stare at Twitter all day, I didn’t have the luxury of work as an escape, of distracting me from that 50-mile divide. I heard the news of the shooting at 9:30, and didn’t take my eyes off Twitter for the next 10 hours as things played out in a strange and confusing way. By noon, I had to turn off my phone. I simply posted on Facebook: “Thank you for all your texts, emails, tweets, gchats. No one from my family is in Newtown at this time. Everyone is okay.”
That had to have been a tough one to write, but the perspective is enlightening. Thanks Mike for being willing to share.
My favorite end-of-the-year lists are always the photos. Here are a few that have made their way online so far; I’ll be updating this list throughout the month so send me your lists.
2012: The Year in Photos from In Focus: Alan Taylor is still my favorite picker of photos. Here’s part two.
Best Photos of the Year 2012 from Reuters: Almost a hundred photos, heavy on hard news.
The 45 Most Powerful Images of 2012 from Buzzfeed: A wide-ranging selection of photos designed to tug at the heartstrings. See also The Best Animal Photos of 2012.
Pictures of the Year 2012 from AFP (Agence France-Presse): Not an official list but a nice selection of AFP photos nonetheless.
Matt Stopera’s BuzzFeed list is rad.
BuzzFeedPSA: This is the best bot account since @Horse_ebooks.
EDIT: Grr, account suspended!
EDIT: Back once more!
Yo Nick: We know you have servers and history and traffic and all that other crud, but your network of sites is so perfect for Tumblr that it will be like sucking the life out of the room when your server rack gets put back together and you return to the internet in your scrolly, advertisey, comment-mess-withy form. Obviously this was a necessary backup — and we understand if you don’t choose to stay, and glad that your staff is doing OK enough after the hurricane that you’re keeping the content flowing — but this is such a good fit for your style of writing that it actually feels like you’ve been running a Tumblr on here for five years as opposed to twelve hours. Here, we’ll even make a deal: When Adrian Chen decides to unmask a creepy dude from Reddit again, just put a jump on it! We’ll all click!
And for Tumblr, let’s make the inverted argument: Gawker and Buzzfeed could have taken their sites to Angelfire or Xoom, but they chose Tumblr. Doesn’t this scream opportunity? There are some great sites on Tumblr already — but there could be some next-level people-doing-it-for-a-living types on here (including the aforementioned) if you worked on your monetization strategy a little more and thought about how to get publishers a little help.
Basically, what we’re saying is that this format is perfect for you, Gawker, even though this is a backup pair of white denim jeans because you spilled pomegranate juice on your other pair. Just a thought.
Datagram, the ISP whose Manhattan servers host BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Gawker, and other sites, has lost power, an official there told us via text this evening.
“Basement flooded, fuel pump off line - we got people working on it now. 5 feet of water now,” the official wrote.
BuzzFeed’s site and story page are back online, thanks to a Content Delivery Network, Akamai, which hosts the content at servers distributed around the world.
FIVE FEET OF WATER took down three of the biggest new-media sites on the internet. At the same time. Think about how crazy that is.
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Andrew Sullivan has had a long week, guys.
meltdown is putting it lightly
Though you have to admit, his response to the article was pretty spot-on. “Buzzfeed has some fun. I deserve it.” I think Sullivan’s a legend at the blogging game, but they totally nailed this and created what’s probably their best article all week.
There didn’t seem to be any debate-themed drinking games posted on tumblr today, so we thought we’d make one. It’s weird no other sites decided to make one of these, oh well. Try out the BuzzFeed Presidential Debate Drinking Game!
Unemployment counts for a drink? Man, Buzzfeed’s trying to give us alcohol poisoning.
BuzzFeed totally cut to the chase and grabbed the best part of every infomercial — the part where people are trying to do a mundane task and are absolutely awful at it. Supremely entertaining.
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