BuzzFeed, the news and viral content factory that has sometimes been burned by made-up news stories, has hired a leading warrior against fake viral content to head up its new Canadian editorial operations.

Craig Silverman, (pictured, right) author of an award-winning book about journalistic errors, will lead a small team of reporters based in Toronto and Ottawa, as the New York-based site expands into its eighth international territory.

In an interview this week before BuzzFeed announced his hiring on Friday, Silverman told The Globe and Mail he would be adding two political journalists and a social-news editor, who will create content around stories that are blowing up online. He will also oversee two staffers creating so-called buzz items, non-journalistic ephemera calculated to be widely shared.

Silverman said that while BuzzFeed may be covering subjects and stories already in the news, it will take a different approach. “We won’t be looking at what happened today in Parliament. At times we’ll be satirical, humour-driven, personality-driven, and I think that’s a different thing that doesn’t exist today,” he said.

Until now, BuzzFeed’s Canadian editorial content has been limited: It launched a Canadian Twitter feed last summer that traffics heavily in Canuck clichés. (Earlier this week, it linked to a BuzzFeed item headlined: “Here Is Every Canadian Province Ranked By How Much They Secretly Love Nickelback.” Another item ran then-and-now photos of the cast of Degrassi: The Next Generation.)

The site, which has approximately 900 editorial, video, engineering and sales staff around the world, says it has more than 200 million monthly unique views, almost half of which originate outside the United States. That success has led to editorial operations in Britain, France, Brazil, India, Germany, Australia and Mexico.

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