Buzzfeed recruits TikTok teens for election coverage

Buzzfeed News, the newsier companion site to the fizzy, pop culture-oriented Buzzfeed, is looking for a handful of media savvy teens to create original TikTok and Instagram content as part of its coverage of the 2020 general election.

According to the position application, the site is looking to pluck these “Teen Ambassadors” from “swing states or places that might be overlooked in the nationwide political conversation” to collaborate with their election newsroom team on weekly original video content.   

Buzzfeed News is looking for ambassadors aged between 16-19 years, meaning the candidates selected will not all be of legal voting age. The teens will be selected based on their commitment to the political issues of the day, and ability to effectively and creatively tell stories using the modern platforms. 

“We’re thinking about the way news is going to look in the future and playing around with that vision,” Buzzfeed News’ director of news curation Sara Yasin told Nieman Lab. 

Though both BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News have popular accounts on a variety of social media platforms, their numbers have not yet picked up on TikTok, a short-form video platform used primarily by Gen Z-ers between the ages of 16-24. As other news sites begin to pivot toward new social media platforms, this is Buzzfeed News’ play to join efforts to court a meaningful share of young social media users. 

This announcement came just one week after BuzzFeed founding editor Ben Smith announced his departure to become the media columnist for the New York Times.