BuzzFeed UK is expanding its coverage into sports with the hiring of former Mirror deputy head of social content Richard Beech, who will focus on football.
The push into sports follows BuzzFeed UK’s hiring of an investigative team led by former Times Insight team assistant editor Heidi Blake earlier this year. The US operation also recently hired a social sports editor, Rawan Eewshah.
At the Mirror, Beech initially worked on MirrorFootball before moving into the social content teams behind UsVsTh3m, Ampp3d and football project MirrorRowZ.
“I am incredibly excited to join BuzzFeed in the UK as it continuously expands its coverage from politics to investigative, new formats and now sports. Sports is inherently a social topic and a perfect fit for BuzzFeed,” said Beech.
BuzzFeed UK editor Luke Lewis said: “Richard has a proven track record in crafting football content that gets shared like crazy. I’m overjoyed we’ve managed to poach him.”
Beech was not among the 14 staff working on social content projects served with notice of redundancy by Trinity Mirror earlier this month. Of those projects, both UsVsTh3m and Ampp3d are thought to be facing the axe, while Row Zed is more likely to continue, integrated into existing football coverage.
BuzzFeed has a history of hiring staff from Trinity Mirror’s social projects, which were set up partly in response to the US company’s success in creating content people want to share on the internet. Both BuzzFeed editorial director Tom Phillips and coder Paul Curry were involved in the early days of UsVsTh3m.
