The GuardianThe Guardian

The digital graveyard: BuzzFeed News joins sites hanging on in eerie afterlife

By Alaina Demopoulos

24 Apr 2023 · 3 min read

Editor's Note

BuzzFeed News will join an internet graveyard of shut-down sites, where homepages are left to memorialize whatever made headlines on the day. The Guardian reviews some of these internet time capsules.

The closure of BuzzFeed News this week followed a familiar script for those who have followed the rise and fall of digital media. There were Twitter eulogies from current and former staff and op-eds on who was to blame for the site’s mismanagement.

Bosses promised to keep the BuzzFeed News site online as an archive, which means, like so many other failed online projects, whatever happened to be on the homepage that day will now be frozen in time forever. In this case: a feature on the history of Midge, Barbie’s pregnant sidekick, an explainer on what to do after “overdosing” on weed and a review of Le Creuset’s new “shallot” cookware shade, which called the color “the trend child of millennial pink and Alison Roman’s shallot pasta”.

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