In an email to employees shared with NBC News, Buzzfeed Inc. CEO and co-founder Jonah Peretti said the move was part of a 15% workforce reduction across a number of teams.
While layoffs are occurring across almost every division, we ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund Buzzfeed News as a stand-alone organization, he said.
Peretti said he has overinvested in Buzzfeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms would not provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.
He added that he had failed to hold the firm to higher standards for profitability to give it a buffer during downturns.
In 2020, BuzzFeed acquired the HuffPost, which BuzzFeed acquired in 2020, and which Peretti said is profitable, with a loyal direct front-page audience. Affected BuzzFeed News staffers will be able to apply for a number of select positions at HuffPost and BuzzFeed.com. Peretti said he plans to engage with the News Guild union about the cost reduction plans and what they would mean for affected union members.
In the outset of 2012, Buzzfeed News launched in earnest as it named Ben Smith, a longtime New York City political reporter, as its Editor-in-Chief. In 2021, the news organization won the Pulitzer Prize for a series that exposed China's widespread detention of Muslims. It also was named a Pulitzer finalist in the same year, the second time it had received the honor.
Later that year, Buzzfeed Inc. became the first publicly traded company, following a worldwide frenzy of reverse mergers, many of which have since lost substantial value. In this case, Buzzfeed never traded above its initial public offering price of about $10.
Following the news, shares in General Electric fell another 20 percent to close at $0.72 a share.
The announcement came just a day after the digital media giant Insider said it would reduce its workforce by 10 percent. The Beast first reported on the layoffs of the Insiders.
The job cuts reflect a broader decline in the media and tech industries, as the fast-paced growth seen during the immediate aftermath of the pandemic has begun to fade as the economy slows. The other digital platforms that have announced headcount reductions include ESPN, Spotify, Yahoo, and Vimeo.