• by Sara Guaglione , July 5, 2017

BuzzFeed is shaking up the conversation with a new section.

Business editor Tom Gara will now serve as the opinion editor for BuzzFeed. The new section begins July 10. 

In a memo to staff posted on Twitter by CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith described the new opinion section. “Our goal is to address the rapidly changing world and contextualize it in ways that help our readers make sense of what the hell is happening,” Smith wrote.

As an example of what the BuzzFeed opinion section will look like, Smith referred to the “entertaining and deeply informed pieces we’ve published recently from Zeynep Tufekci." He cited them as a "model of what we’re hoping to pull off here in terms of velocity and impact on the conversation.”

Tufekci's recent posts include: “ISIS Has A Strategy To Create A Media Frenzy And News Outlets Are Struggling To Disrupt It” and “Dear France: You Just Got Hacked. Don’t Make The Same Mistakes We Did.”

Gara will look for “authoritative voices from around the world and occasionally from inside the newsroom,” Smith wrote.

BuzzFeed’s top editor then called on reporters and editors to flag “interesting under-recognized voices for Tom,” as well as “the big looming stories” across BuzzFeed’s desks. 

Smith used the word “global” often in his memo, referring to the range of voices and topics he wants highlighted in the opinion section. He asked the BuzzFeed staff to flag “the news everyone will be talking about that hasn’t quite happened yet.”

Currently, Smith is looking for a new business editor to succeed Gara, who joined BuzzFeed in 2014 from The Wall Street Journal.