This 14 January 2015 LinkedIn/email exchange records Michael Leidig corresponding with Heidi Blake after her move to BuzzFeed, following his earlier message congratulating her and mentioning possible investigative stories including child trafficking and another investigation involving a former British justice minister. Leidig tells Blake that CEN already did “a lot of work for BuzzFeed” but adds that it was probably not the work she would be interested in, because “it’s the tabloid stories that provide the funding for everything else we do.” He also says he was happier with that model than taking money from PR or marketing firms, sponsors or vested interests to place material in the news feed, and explains that he wanted to deliver finished investigations because CEN was interested in them, not because money was the main priority. The document is significant because it records, before BuzzFeed’s public attack on CEN, a direct explanation to a senior BuzzFeed investigations figure of the agency’s mixed editorial model: commercial tabloid and viral content helped fund more serious investigative work, while CEN rejected paid PR or sponsored influence over its news feed. In the wider evidence chain, it helps complicate the later framing of CEN as merely a supplier of sensational viral material, showing that the agency itself distinguished between revenue-generating tabloid content, serious investigations and ethically problematic PR-funded material, and was actively trying to place public-interest stories with editors who might value them.