BuzzFeed's international coverage has officially begun.
Max Seddon, of the Associated Press, has been tapped as the site's first foreign correspondent. The hire comes just one month after Miriam Elder announced that she would join the site as its foreign editor.
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Seddon will report out of Moscow for the popular social news site. Seddon already lives in Moscow and has plenty of experience reporting from there, most recently for the Associated Press. He has also written for The Moscow Times.
BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith tells TheWrap: "Max is exactly the sort of reporter we are always looking for: a social web native with a deep understanding of his beat, fluency (in this case literal fluency) in its language, and a nose for the huge story, like Putin's recent crackdown on NGOs, which he was the first foreign reporter to document."
Seddon is probably best remembered these days for tweeting a photo an empty airplane seat on a flight from Moscow to Cuba. The seat was supposed to be Edward Snowden's, but the man who leaked the big NSA story to the Guardian in June never showed up for the flight.
Standing next to Edward Snowden's seat on flight to Cuba. He ain't here. pic.twitter.com/NVRH3Pzved
– max seddon (@maxseddon) June 24, 2013