The two outlets are teaming up. But don't expect a corgi takeover of nytimes.com anytime soon.
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Today, in a very serious and official press release, The New York Times -- the Gray Lady, the Paper of Record, brought to you from New York's Tower of News -- announced a new collaboration. With Buzzfeed.
So ...
But also, just a little bit ...
The team-up will find the two powerful institutions working together to cover the upcoming political conventions, via video segments that will feature Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and others among the site's political reporters. And the collaboration makes, initial WTF notwithstanding, a lot of sense: It gives Buzzfeed some additional credibility as a purveyor of Serious Journalism; and it gives the Times some additional credit for its willingness to dive into the LOLing underbelly of the Internet.
So, actually, really:
And that's the point. As collaboration among media outlets becomes increasingly common, we'll likely see more of these marriages of complementary convenience. Jim Roberts, the Times's assistant managing editor, sees the videos as a way to tap into the spirit of the social web. "We're looking to fuse the energy and the social awareness that Ben and his reporters have with a lot of our traditional reporting strengths and styles," he told me. "I'm a big fan of Ben's work, and I've begun following, rather avidly, many of the reporters that work for him. And I'm struck by the way they approach stories. I'm struck by the energy that they throw into it, the liveliness of what they do."