Salon.com > BuzzFeed

All you need to know about #nerdprom — in 10 tweets

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 13:45:00 +0000

What happened at this year's White House Correspondents Dinner was, by and large, what happens at every White House Correspondents Dinner. A quick tour through the hilarious and infuriating proceedings:

1). Lots of partygoers adopt the adorable term "nerdprom" for the night -- which you should roll your eyes at and be appropriately skeptical of:

[embedtweet id="328327562331824128"]

2). People who most feel left out invariably throw a snit about the whole thing:

[embedtweet id="328346466567479296"]

(Greg Mitchell posted four photos of Palin from 2011’s “nerdprom.” Did she not get an invite this year? )

3). Conan O’Brien, a funnyman, was funny! Best joke:

[embedtweet id="328341437341114370"]

(Watch entire video of O'Brien here)

4). Barack Obama: Even funnier -- maybe because a slight contempt for the proceedings seems to come through:

[embedtweet id="328475355407073280"]

Chasing Amanda Bynes: Is it ethical for outlets to pursue interviews with a damaged star?

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:24:00 +0000

A Britney Spears-size vacuum in our culture demands to be filled.

Britney Spears, in 2007 and early 2008, was notable not merely for a particular sort of aimless wandering through Los Angeles but for an alternately hostile and coddling relationship with the press. She'd alternately romance a paparazzo and scream at the cameras who followed her around. An Allure magazine cover from the period, for which Spears consented to be photographed but not interviewed, said it all: "Britney Spears Tells Us Nothing -- and Everything."

Spears and the paparazzi, as documented in Rolling Stone and the Atlantic, had a symbiotic relationship. She rejected and sought their attention, all at once, on days-long, caffeinated drives to nowhere. But by now, with a return to apparent health and two albums and a season of TV under her belt, Spears is no longer the object of prurient interest she'd once been.

GOP thinks imitating BuzzFeed to raise money is WIN!

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

The GOP is going to make its own BuzzFeed, apparently. National Journal's Brian Fung "won the Internet" yesterday with his report on the National Republican Congressional Committee's thrilling new website, which has a sidebar, and features lists.

The NRCC also hired 20 writers (the GOP will save publishing!) to create conservative versions of the soul-deadening crap BuzzFeed's list-generators are forced to compile. While it may sound like the aim is to appeal to a new demo -- kids who remember the '90s and who also believe that balancing the federal budget with deep domestic spending cuts will also somehow spur economic growth -- it's actually not quite that ambitious: The point is to boost traffic to the NRCC website, and therefore to increase donations to the NRCC. It appeared to be working, too, even before the entire liberal Internet stopped to point and laugh at the notion of a "conservative BuzzFeed," giving the project a massive amount of attention.

GOP’s new digital strategy is BuzzFeed

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:32:00 +0000

The National Republican Congressional Committee is going for Internet lols. The organization is relaunching its website, and aims to model it after Internet media giant BuzzFeed -- complete with animated gifs, cute animals, lists and all.

The site has already added "13 Animals That Are Really Bummed on Obamacare's Third Birthday" and meme-like images on its Facebook page, such as this one:
[caption id="attachment_13261666" align="alignleft" width="600" caption=" "]

"BuzzFeed's eating everyone's lunch," NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing told the National Journal. "They're making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way."

U.S. media’s Malaysian government shills

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:54:00 +0000

A BuzzFeed scoop Friday reported that U.S. news publications including the Huffington Post, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Times and the National Review published stories by opinion writers paid to shill for the Malaysian government.

A DoJ filing revealed that Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, received $389,724.70 under contract with the Malaysian government and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers to criticize Malaysian opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim.

Via BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray:

No, BuzzFeed, no one seriously compared anything to slavery

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:55:00 +0000

Nine times out of 10, when you see a headline use the format "[Political figure] compares [current issue] to [uniquely tragic or horrific historical event or figure]" you are about to read some idiotic trumped-up outrage fuel. The Internet is powered by trumped-up outrage fuel, and "dumbass says this is just like what the Nazis did" is can't-miss click bait. So here's BuzzFeed's John Stanton with "Ed Markey Compares Campaign Finance Ruling to Decision Upholding Slavery."

In traditional BuzzFeed fashion, the story is big shareable SHOCK headline in the front, boring and largely unread context that defuses most of the outrage in the back. (I think this common style of controversy-stoking story packaging is "TRASHY" and "EW.")

Here's the relevant bit:

"I want to go to the United States Senate in order to fight for a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United. The whole idea that the Koch brothers, that Karl Rove can say we're coming to Massachusetts, to any state of the union with undisclosed amounts of money is a pollution, which must be changed," Markey said to loud applause.

"The constitution must be amended. The Dred Scott decision had to be repealed, we have to repeal Citizens United," he added.

Little Disappointments: Adele to Raphael

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

We spend most of the week at Salon exploring the day’s big events and outrages, the fiery, boiling cauldron that rests on the front burner of the news.

But life’s incidental urgencies, the bummers in a minor key, often play as meaningful, if momentary, role in our days. So we’re giving our little disappointments their own Saturday column. And we hope you’ll send us your own, as well.

[slide_show id=13203564]

Is the presidential campaign book dead?

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:53:00 +0000

After the death of Richard Ben Cramer — whose "What It Takes: The Way to the White House" beautifully crystallized the 1988 campaign but was harshly received by his campaign-trail colleagues — and given the success of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's dull, gossipy book and HBO's movie adaptation of "Game Change," it's hard not to feel as though the campaign book is dead. The long-form, retrospective appraisal of the quadrennial cycle used to be done by Newsweek. Now BuzzFeed is attempting to get in the game with correspondent Michael Hastings' often-profane "Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign." The book, which tells of Hastings' often contentious relationship with the Obama press shop during the campaign and with other reporters, comes out today. We spoke with Hastings about the difficulty of writing long form and of brokering access to political figures.