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.
The everyday things we take for granted become vital when we're deprived of them. Prisoners, powerless, have fought for their right to paper. The paper object—book, magazine, letter, paperwork and usable trash—is socially crucial not only for what it is, but what it can become.