‘Is Jonah Peretti axing himself too?’: Grief and anger among journalists as Buzzfeed News shuts down

Buzzfeed News is shutting down, and journalists took to social media last night to mourn its loss.

Started 12 years ago, the news division of media company Buzzfeed has won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award. A memo sent to staff by Buzzfeed CEO and cofounder Jonah Peretti confirmed that the company will slash about 15 percent of its workforce – about 180 people of its current staff of 1,200. In December last year, the company had also announced a layoff of 12 percent of its staff. 

Now, Buzzfeed Inc will have only one remaining news brand, HuffPost. Peretti blamed the decision on “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”.

He also said he had “made the decision to overinvest” in the news division, without recognising that they did not have the financial support needed to sustain the operations.

This is such a shame. I am still mystified that you could run a digital media company that was doing such important investigative and cultural work into the ground within so few years https://t.co/naYeXcbvky

— Amanda Katz (@katzish) April 20, 2023

BuzzFeed News funneled venture capital into something genuinely very useful and necessary: High-quality reporting freely available for anyone to read. It was the envy of every reporter who entered journalism in the chaotic 2010s and didn't work there. What a loss.

— Alexander Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) April 20, 2023

So, is Jonah Peretti axing himself too, or...? Because in his memo he calls out about half a dozen ways in which he personally screwed BuzzFeed News. https://t.co/VDRo7JyXgl

— Kate Erbland (@katerbland) April 20, 2023

Terrible day.@BuzzFeedNews helped free people from prison, changed laws, got sexual harassers fired, and more. As it did so, it won a Pulitzer, Pulitzer finalist honors 3 times, 3 Polk Awards, a National Magazine Award, etc.

Happy to help editors find great journalists.

— Mark Schoofs (@SchoofsFeed) April 20, 2023

restore my access so I can send a final tweet from the @BuzzFeedNews account you cowards!!!!!

— Brandon Hardin (@hardin) April 20, 2023

The silver lining is that my parents are finally visiting me in the US for the first time. They landed last night so I’m just going to sob into my mom’s shoulder for a bit.

— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (@PranavDixit) April 20, 2023

Well, well ... look who paid for Twitter (but not other things) pic.twitter.com/asCeWj1wnL

— Peter Aldhous (@paldhous) April 20, 2023

Founded in 2006, Buzzfeed boasted strong backing by venture capital money and had also been planning an initial public offering, worth about $1.5 billion at one point. In 2021, it went public by merging with a SPAC, a blank-check company. This led to the withdrawal of investments by a significant chunk of investors.  

Initially popular for listicles and online quizzes, Buzzfeed had eventually become a serious contender in the news space. It won a Pulitzer Prize for its reports on Chinese detention camps for Muslims in Xinjiang. However, in its spade of experiments, the company’s news unit had recently begun to churn out AI-generated articles.

The future of news media is rough, and the shutting down of Buzzfeed News exemplifies this. This is why you need to support independent media and support journalists who tell the stories that matter. Pay to keep news free and subscribe to Newslaundry today.

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