BuzzFeed’s distributed content strategy meets its efforts to cover (and also hire) more diverse communities in Pero Like, a new distributed project that is aiming to making “content that resonates with English-speaking Latinxs,” according to tweets announcing the project from staffers Alex Alvarez and Norberto Briceño. (“Latinx” is a gender-nonspecific term.) The new distributed vertical is a collaboration between BuzzFeed’s editorial team and BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, the company’s Los Angeles-based video arm, and is launching first on Facebook and YouTube.
From the memo that Alvarez and Briceño posted about the project’s launch:
We’re launching as a Facebook and YouTube channel, making content that resonates with English-speaking Latinxs (who are, to put it mildly, kind of a big deal). We’re a group that’s historically been under- and misrepresented in media, and we’re here to change that. The purpose of this initiative is to feature the best, funniest, smartest, and most in-depth look at the myriad identities under the “Latinx” umbrella. This is for blaxicans in LA, Tejanos in Corpus Christi, Cubans in Miami (and their abuelitas), and everyone who’s been told they don’t “look Latina.” It’s for the bold, the proud, the creative, and even the hopelessly awkward. We’re here for you too, man.
The approach is similar to BuzzFeed’s Cocoa Butter, which is another “distributed project” that exists across BuzzFeed’s social accounts and emphasizes “making fun stuff for and about brown folks.” The intention there, as BuzzFeed writer and co-host of the podcast Another Round Tracy Clayton tweeted, was to avoid cordoning off “black content” to a separate section on the BuzzFeed site and instead distributing new content more widely.
The Pero Like Facebook page already has well over 60,000 likes since launch and features a number of native Facebook videos (with Facebook-sharing friendly topics like “12 Things Salvadoran Americans Are Tired Of Hearing”) and classic BuzzFeed formulations with a Latinx spin (“This Telenovela Hunk Will Get You All Hot And Bothered”).
Many tweeted happily about the vertical:
@soalexgoes SIIIIIII! this is what buzzfeed was missing! looking forward to the kick ass content!
— Anniemated (@ana_belen22) February 11, 2016
Sharing this for my Latinx friends because everyone deserves representation. https://t.co/FQSTFqi5qf
— Batman. (@britjack_) February 11, 2016
YES. Always here for PoC representation. We need it. https://t.co/8BDUbqgfyN
— Kelcie Willis (@kelciewillis) February 11, 2016
I saw the words "Cubans in Miami" and shouted "MY PEOPLE!" 💃💃💃 https://t.co/Bp9PMfuDx1
— Kimberly Alonso (@KimberlyAAlonso) February 11, 2016
