On April 20, American ‘liberal’ media company BuzzFeed stated it would close its news business to concentrate its news content on HuffPost and reduce its workforce by 15 per cent, sending the digital media company’s stock down 10 per cent, as per the reports. These layoffs are part of the workforce reduction strategy.
According to an email from CEO Jonah Peretti, 15 per cent of employees are being laid off across multiple teams. He highlighted, “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 organisation”.
While making the decision about the layoffs, Peretti asserted that BuzzFeed had ‘overinvested’ in its News Division, despite facing numerous challenges, such as the Coronavirus epidemic, a tech recession, a diminishing digital advertising market, a plummeting stock market, and a difficult economy. He said, “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”.
Peretti added, “Additionally, I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media”.
Notably, the journalists from the news division got Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for covering the detention of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in China.
As per the reports, the CEO expressed regret for not maintaining the company to ‘higher standards of profitability’, which resulted in failing to supply a buffer during downturns.
However, Buzzfeed will continue to operate HuffPost, which it purchased in 2020. Peretti said, “Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience”.
Peretti wrote, “I’ve learned from these mistakes, and the team moving forward has learned from them as well”. He added, “We know that the changes and improvements we are making today are necessary steps to building a better future”.
The company said the affected staff would be considered for available positions at the main site BuzzFeed.com and HuffPost.
The company announced that Chief Revenue Officer Edgar Hernandez and Chief Operating Officer Christian Baesler have decided to leave as part of the restructuring. President Marcela Martin will assume immediate control of all revenue functions.
BuzzFeed, which produces news, videos and online quizzes, was founded in 2006 by Peretti and John Johnson and in 2021, it went public through a blank-check merger. Since its initial public offering, its shares have lost 93% of their value.
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