BuzzFeed is axing 15 per cent of its staff and closing down BuzzFeed News, chief executive Jonah Peretti wrote in an email to staff on Thursday (April 20).
The site is well known for both entertaining viral content such as quizzes and lists, as well as original news reporting — even winning a Pulitzer prize for its reporting.
The layoffs will affect BuzzFeed’s business, content, administration, and technology teams.
It means that CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO Christian Baesler will exit the company.
But why is Buzzfeed closing the site?
Here’s what we know.
Why is Buzzfeed News closing?
Ultimately, the publisher was unable to overcome the challenges facing digital journalism — which have been experienced by multiple outlets.
The email which was sent to staff was seen by the Standard, and Mr Peretti cited the Covid pandemic, “a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market” among reasons for the changes.
He also said he could have “managed these changes better as the CEO of this company” and said the “leadership team could have performed better”.
“Our job is to adapt, change, improve and perform despite the challenges in the world. We can and will do better,” he wrote.
Mr Peretti went on to admit that he 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.”
He added: “I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability.”
For a long time, analysts have cautioned against companies relying too heavily on social media to reach readers, with networks such as Facebook and Google securing most of the available ad dollars.
These networks increasingly favour types of content that don’t yield much money for publishers.
How will Buzzfeed staff be affected?
There will be substantial redundancies across the company.
Staff were told that Huffington Post, which was co-founded by Mr Peretti, and BuzzFeed Dot Com, “have signalled that they will open a number of select roles” for BuzzFeed News staff.
“Please know that we exhausted many other cost-saving measurs to preserve as many jobs as possible,” Mr Peretti said.
“I’ve learned from these mistakes and the team moving forward has learned from them as well.”
The company’s president, Marcela Martin, will take on responsibility “for all revenue functions effective immediately”, he said.
Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Mr Peretti and John S Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content.
