Overwhelmed by the things people have said about BuzzFeed UK News on here tonight. Quite apart from the scoops and the great writing, I think these things matter:
1. Unlike newspapers at the time we generally treated things happening on social media with the seriousness they deserved — we understood things that happened online weren't just an "internet story", they had to be treated with the rigour we'd report anything else.
2. We realised there was a lot of weird pageantry around how news is presented. Tell the story as you'd tell it to your friends in a pub; the internet's a social place.
3. We gave voice to minorities, we had a more diverse staff than anywhere else I've worked in news. This wasn't a tick box thing, it was just the result of a hiring process based around who had the most interesting things to say.
I had few offers over the years and never took them up because I always thought it was important to contribute to one of the few remaining free news sources in the UK. But also, the amount of talent in that office was unreal. I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. x
