BuzzFeed News will shut down, the company announced on Friday.
BuzzFeed, the liberal website that famously published the Steele dossier in 2017, will cut roughly 15% of its staff and shutter its news operation because of a downward trend in performance combined with a challenging economy.
"We are reducing our workforce by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News. Additionally, we are proposing headcount reductions in some international markets," BuzzFeed CEO John Peretti wrote in a memo to staffers obtained by Fox News Digital.
The company currently has roughly 1,200 employees, meaning roughly 180 jobs will be lost. CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO Christian Baesler are leaving the company, and BuzzFeed President Marcela Martin will take on responsibility for all revenue functions effective immediately.
"Impacted employees (other than those in BuzzFeed News) will receive an email from HR shortly. If you are receiving this note from me, you are not impacted by today’s changes. For BuzzFeed News, we have begun discussions with the News Guild about these actions," Peretti continued. "The changes the Business Organization is making today are focused on reducing layers in their organization, increasing speed and effectiveness of pitches, streamlining our product mix, doubling down on creators, and beginning to bring AI enhancements to every aspect of our sales process."
A company insider said BuzzFeed is only moving forward with departments that have proven to be profitable, and the news operation simply doesn’t hit that requirement. BuzzFeed and sister company HuffPost are expected to offer roles to several impacted BuzzFeed News journalists.
HuffPost will be the company’s sole news organization moving forward.
"While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we've determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization. As a result, we will engage with the News Guild about our cost reduction plans and what this will mean for the affected union members," Peretti wrote.
"I want to explain a little more about why we’ve come to these deeply painful decisions. We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts. Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending," he continued. "But I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better despite these circumstances. Our job is to adapt, change, improve, and perform despite the challenges in the world. We can and will do better."
This is a developing story, more to come…
