The Playful Newsroom
When BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti left the Huffington Post to start his own website, his business model, referred to as the “Reverse Mullet”—party in the front, serious business in the back—was both fun and user-centric.37 Jack Shepherd, one of BuzzFeed’s original eight staff members and now an editorial director, said that when BuzzFeed started its objective “was to try to figure out why certain things spread socially on the web and to then see if we could take some of those principles and actually make things ourselves that had a high chance of being shared.” The company, from its inception, evaluated content via user reaction.
There are many ways in which BuzzFeed defies traditional newsrooms—even with its physical layout. Occupying a wide rectangular floor, the organization is split into equal-sized divisions (including business, editorial, and technology) whose boundaries are difficult to distinguish. Staff sit along out-sized desks, however, many employees roam, taking their laptops to work alone or sometimes in small groups in communal spaces. There are also a handful of standing desks where employees can stretch their legs. BuzzFeed’s floor plan promotes freedom of movement, collaboration, and experimentation.
Despite a propensity for silliness and fun, BuzzFeed does not fully conform to the freewheeling stereotypes associated with tech campuses. Play merely contributes to an environment built around the dissemination of sharable information. BuzzFeed game developer Michael Hansen said he prefers to walk around and check out messages on the internal Slack chat service rather than play ping-pong or Connect Four. He usually works on projects daily, often in conjunction with game development partners. The playful attitude members of BuzzFeed assume is more organic than dictated.