New York, December 3, 2014 — BuzzFeed News announced today it has hired Mat Honan as San Francisco bureau chief. Honan joins from WIRED, where he is a senior staff writer covering the biggest stories on the business and cultural impact of technology. Honan will be responsible for building ambitious expansion plans for the bureau, leading a world-class team of reporters and driving the vision and future of the San Francisco bureau.
"Tech is no longer a niche beat — it's at the heart of the biggest cultural and economic transformations in the world, and we are eager to tell that story in a compelling, enterprising, independent, and creative way. Mat is a rare journalist who has always understood that tech coverage can't be put in a box, and we are thrilled he'll be bringing his vision and sheer energy to BuzzFeed News," said Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief.
"BuzzFeed is one of the most ambitious companies in media, or any other field, and I'm incredibly excited to lead the San Francisco bureau for BuzzFeed News. Our coverage will be aggressive and bold, like our hiring, and we'll look to do the kind of authoritative reporting that asks questions and gets real answers from the most powerful people in this industry. I can't wait to get started," said Honan.
In total, the San Francisco bureau will grow in 2015 to approximately 20 editorial staffers. The BuzzFeed News staff will have 8 to 10 tech and business reporters. BuzzFeed News Investigative Editor Mark Schoofs will hire and edit an investigative reporter to tell untold stories in one of the most powerful and influential industries in the world. Honan will work closely with Shani Hilton, executive editor of news, in building and recruiting for the bureau.
BuzzFeed News' current tech reporters will report into the new San Francisco bureau under Honan. Charlie Warzel has been promoted to senior writer and will get back to his core interests in writing and reporting both daily stories and longer features on tech and culture and the intersection of the two.
BuzzFeed Life, under Peggy Wang and Emily Fleischaker, will expand its coverage to gadgets and tech product guides and will hire writers based in the new bureau. Deputy Editorial Director Jessica Misener will relocate to San Francisco to join the bureau, lead the bureau's web culture coverage, and continue to experiment with new post formats.
Honan begins December 17 and will report to the executive editor for news.
Other BuzzFeed bureaus include Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Sydney, Mumbai, Sao Paulo.
About Honan:
Mat Honan is a senior staff writer at WIRED, where he writes about the business and cultural impact of technology and the giants of industry. His series of stories in 2012 on hacking and social engineering spurred Amazon, Apple, Paypal, and AOL to change their account authentication procedures. In 2009, his WIRED cover story as a human node in a location-aware world was named Best Innovation Journalism Story of the Year by Stanford University. He has extensive media experience with national appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Dateline and Nightly News, CNBC's Squawk Box and Street Signs, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, CNN, Bloomberg TV, NPR, PBS, and more. Honan also co-founded the 2010 Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine, and his work has appeared in The Awl, Gizmodo, Macworld, Mother Jones, The National Journal, Popular Science, Salon, and many more. He's also the guy who brought you Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle, lol.
About BuzzFeed:
BuzzFeed is the social news and entertainment company. BuzzFeed is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology. BuzzFeed provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video across the social web to its global audience of more than 175M.
