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Very strange to see these low effort negative comments on HN. BuzzFeed News is not BuzzFeed and it’s not the first time they are recognized by journalistic awar

Very strange to see these low effort negative comments on HN. BuzzFeed News is not BuzzFeed and it’s not the first time they are recognized by journalistic awards. They actually did something very interesting: built a team of investigative journalists inside a click-bait factory. Usually trend is the opposite - to go down from journalism to churning as many clicks-generating titles as possible. The actual series of articles that got them the Pulitzer Prize: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-internment-camps-xinjiang-uighurs-muslims https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-inter...

whymauri 5y ago
It's ironic because when the series of Pulitzer winning articles were posted on HN they collected over 1000 votes and were on the frontpage twice. Now every is surprised_pikachu.jpg that they won a Pulitzer...
makomk 5y ago
They were previously a Pulitzer finalist for a series of articles on supposed Russian assassinations in western countries that went firmly into conspiracy theory territories. The one I personally spotted was an article about the death of a British scientist which made it sound like the police were covering up by treating it as a suicide - except their entire evidence for it being a Russian assassination was some of his relatives not knowing he was suicidal and Buzzfeed massively overstating his role in the Litvinenko investigation as justification for why Russia wanted him dead. They even eventually admitted he had been suicidally depressed, those close to him were aware of this, and there was no evidence of foul play - and then claimed it could've been caused by secret undetectable Russian mind control chemicals as justification for continuing to treat this as an assassination. I'm not even kidding. It sounds like this series of articles might've been better than their last attempt, but long form is not the same as actually good investigative reporting and the Pulitzer isn't worth what it once was (if it ever was worth much - there have been some pretty dodgy winners in the past too).
xmprt 5y ago
I remember one of the first incidents they were involved in was the witch hunt for the Boston bombers. It's nice that they've come a long way since then.

whymauri 5y ago

It's ironic because when the series of Pulitzer winning articles were posted on HN they collected over 1000 votes and were on the frontpage twice. Now every is surprised_pikachu.jpg that they won a Pulitzer...

makomk 5y ago

They were previously a Pulitzer finalist for a series of articles on supposed Russian assassinations in western countries that went firmly into conspiracy theory territories. The one I personally spotted was an article about the death of a British scientist which made it sound like the police were covering up by treating it as a suicide - except their entire evidence for it being a Russian assassination was some of his relatives not knowing he was suicidal and Buzzfeed massively overstating his role in the Litvinenko investigation as justification for why Russia wanted him dead. They even eventually admitted he had been suicidally depressed, those close to him were aware of this, and there was no evidence of foul play - and then claimed it could've been caused by secret undetectable Russian mind control chemicals as justification for continuing to treat this as an assassination. I'm not even kidding. It sounds like this series of articles might've been better than their last attempt, but long form is not the same as actually good investigative reporting and the Pulitzer isn't worth what it once was (if it ever was worth much - there have been some pretty dodgy winners in the past too).

xmprt 5y ago

I remember one of the first incidents they were involved in was the witch hunt for the Boston bombers. It's nice that they've come a long way since then.