Exec at fast-growing cab alternative suggests smearing woman journalist.

Trapped in the midst of listcicles like “17 Signs You’re in Love with Grilled Cheese and Didn’t Realize Until This Moment” and “11 Delicious Reasons Why Pie is Better Than Cake,” BuzzFeed.com has been conjuring some serious journalism. The infotainment site/timesuck, under direction of Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, launched an investigative unit in 2013 and hired Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Schoofs to run it. (As an aside, I heard Schoofs, who won the 2000 Pulitzer for International Reporting for a series on AIDS in Africa, speak at a conference over the summer. He’s a hardass, in a magnificent way. “Reporting begins,” he said, “when a source says ‘no.’” Amen to that.)

On Monday, BuzzFeed exploded beyond the cat videos, the pictorial lists of funny-faced animals “that can’t even handle it right now,” and fired a resounding shot across the bow of the business, technology and investment worlds. It came in a story Smith wrote about horrifying comments made by Emil Michael, vice president of the popular ride-share company Uber, at a dinner in New York.

A fast primer. The San Francisco-based Uber’s service works like this: Users download an app onto their smartphones and “hail” rides from citizen drivers who work under contract. Uber launched a version of its service in Monterey last February. Cab companies hate it – it’s competition, and it’s unregulated competition. Uber drivers don’t require the same kind of licensing or insurance mainstream cabbies do. The service is, as they say in techspeak, an industry disruptor.

According to the BuzzFeed report, Michael was at a private dinner attended by what’s been described as New York elite. Journalist Michael Wolff, publishing magnate Arianna Huffington and actor Edward Norton were among the guests, and the host was former British government adviser Ian Osborne, who now advises Uber. And somehow, the guests got on the topic of all of Uber’s bad press.

Some of that press has come from previous unfortunate remarks by company executives, and from ham-handed marketing schemes, such as giving customers the option to hail scantily clad women drivers. The CEO, meanwhile, publicly said he called the service “Boober” because he was getting so much action running a high-profile company. In once instance, an Uber driver turned out to be a convicted sex offender, something that didn’t show up in company background checks.

Journalist Sarah Lacy, founder of the tech site PandoDaily, wrote that women should delete the app immediately based on the perception that Uber promoted sexism and misogyny and didn’t care about the safety of female passengers. Michael responded that if women deleted the app, Lacy should be held responsible for any passenger subsequently sexually assaulted by a cab driver.

At that New York dinner, Michael said he’d been thinking of ways to shut bad press down. He said he was willing to spend $1 million of Uber’s money on opposition research; in particular, he wanted to go after Lacy.

And he said it in the presence of a BuzzFeed reporter who was a guest of Wolff’s.

The response since BuzzFeed posted the story has been explosive. “#deleteuber” has been has become a war cry on Twitter. A-list investors in the company are being publicly confronted with the question, “What are you prepared to do?” Lacy, who goes by the nickname “Sara Cuda,” tells KQED’s Michael Krasny she fears for her children’s safety.

There’s been a lot of defiant backpedaling on the part of Uber. Michael at first said he thought the dinner party was off the record. Realizing that wouldn’t cut it, he obtained Lacy’s cell phone number and called her; she refused to have the discussion off the record, and Michael hung up.

On Tuesday, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick tried to distance the company from Michael’s comments without actually firing him. Investors aren’t saying much. Lacy says she’s updating her home security system.

And I’m hitting the delete button on my Uber app. I use it in San Francisco. Or rather, I used it in San Francisco. No more.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com.