BuzzFeed vs. Trump

In January, we reached out to BuzzFeed in the wake of the dossier to find out whether the company felt it would be putting itself at risk — legal and financial — by publishing such materials. Recently, Aleksef Gubarev, the Russian-born chief executive of tech firm XBT, sued BuzzFeed for defamation.

Though Gubarev’s lawyer insists that his client is in no way tied to the president’s administration and the suit is not political, it does pose a major question for BuzzFeed: What are the potential repercussions of its aggressive approach to journalism, which pushes beyond some of its more traditional competitors? And in the Trump era, how should it balance the risk and reward of hard-hitting journalism at a company that makes most of its money on light-hearted entertainment?