In the mid-2010s, BuzzFeed News seemed like the most exciting place in media: an almost cloyingly whimsical carnival of abundance where journalists were actually happy. At a time when everything else appeared to be crumbling, it burst with hope and possibility.

Last month, after just a few years of layoffs and withering, it shut down for good.

And if the quick life and death of BuzzFeed News represented the whole past, present, and future of media collapsed into a single decade, then BuzzFeed Canada was a micocosm of that, living fast and dying young in just a fraction of the time.

Today, BuzzFeed Canada founding editor Craig Silverman (now with ProPublica) and longtime writer Elamin Abdelmahmoud (now with CBC Radio) sit down with Canadaland news editor Jonathan Goldsbie to look at how this strange thing got built up so fast, and what it was like on the inside as it rapidly slipped away

Host: Jonathan Goldsbie

Credits: Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Annette Ejiofor (Managing Editor), Noor Azrieh (Associate Producer)

Further information:

• Definitive Oral History Of BuzzFeed News 2012–2023
• This Is The Definitive Oral History Of The Dead Toronto Raccoon That Went Viral
• 2019 Canadian Association of Journalists McGillivray Award-winning article
• The Drone And The Damage Done
• The Wreck Of HMS Erebus
• 16 Canadian Politicians Who Are Basically Pokémon
• I Hate Myself Because I Don't Work For BuzzFeed

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Broadcast on:

12 Jun 2023