Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke of The New York Observer writes about BuzzFeed’s decision to launch a business news desk.
Bloomgarden-Smoke writes, “‘It’s been fantastic to see Peter, his great team and their exclusive reporting right in the middle of the business conversation from Day 1,’ said BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith. ‘We are also very proud of our dead-on CEO animal doppelgängers.”
“Overall, a big part of the aim of the new business vertical is to engage BuzzFeed’s core audience of 18- to 25-year-olds. To that end, Mr. Lauria said that he planned the section so that he and his team of reporters will cover the corporate angle of media and entertainment, specialty retail ‘important to the BuzzFeed audience’ (such as The Gap, Urban Outfitters and, one imagines, American Apparel), consumer technology and Wall Street — but with a sexy angle.
“‘I remember that part of my life as moving in with my girlfriend, investing in 401ks, maybe looking to buy a house, so those things are becoming more prominent in their lives,’ Mr. Lauria said about his time in the BuzzFeed demo. ‘We don’t need every Wall Street Journal reader or every BuzzFeed reader, but if we can get portions of those two audiences to overlap on a Venn diagram on a regular basis, then I think we have the basis of something really good.’
“So far, in addition to animal comparisons, posts include a piece on the experience of calling the cable company as told through pop-culture gifs, a selection of 14 comics about post-collegiate job hunting, and a scoop about the Abercrombie and Fitch CEO’s partner.”
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