*techno beep*
“Did you hear that? That’s Jojo, our gender neutral robot.”
Jojo, a chatbot, acts as a cohost of BuzzFeed News’ new weekly general-interest news podcast along with human Julia Furlan to help listeners follow along with the stories discussed on the show. The News, which will be released by BuzzFeed’s PodSquad team every Saturday, is designed to give those unacquainted with current events a sensible taste of the nutso news cycle, and also to amplify BuzzFeed reporters’ profiles (hmmm, sounds similar to a certain forthcoming Netflix show). This includes talking through stories with reporters across the BuzzFeed newsroom, quizzing each other on fake news, and using Jojo to help push along BuzzFeed reporting for extra context.
“BuzzFeed as a brand is really smart, very upbeat Internet, but also super accessible. One of our goals has been to talk about the news for our audience in a way that invites them into the news cycle,” said Alex Laughlin, an audio…
