Ryan Broderick has watched digital media companies flame out – beholden to a single source of funding or a fickle algorithm.
So in 2019, he decided to craft a backup plan, while still working as a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News. Broderick started a newsletter roundup of the web’s oddities with a pleasantly putrid name: Garbage Day, an ode to the trash and treasure of the internet (and a nod to a quotable line in the 1987 slasher film “Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2”).
In 2020, Broderick was fired over allegations of plagiarism, which he disputes. Out on his own, he decided to turn his side project into his day job.
Today, Garbage Day is a real media company staffed by fellow veterans of 2010s digital media: head of research Adam Bumas came from encyclopedia Know Your Meme, managing editor Cates Holderness is the BuzzFeed blogger behind viral hit “the…
