BuzzFeed News is shutting down just over a decade after its 2012 launch. BuzzFeed Inc. CEO and founder Jonah Peretti announced the closure...
BuzzFeed News is shutting down just over a decade after its 2012 launch.
BuzzFeed Inc. CEO and founder Jonah Peretti announced the closure to staff on Thursday as part of a wider plan to cut BuzzFeed staff by 15% “across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams.” Chief Revenue Officer Edgar Hernandez and Chief Operating Officer Christian Baesler will also be leaving.
“It might not feel this way today, but I am confident the future of digital media is ours for the taking. Our industry is hurting and ready to be reborn. We are taking great pains today, and will begin to fight our way to a bright future,” Peretti said in a memo to staff.
BuzzFeed News’ closure will affect about 60 people, according to The New York Times. About a dozen staffers in the news division will be offered positions at BuzzFeed.com and The Huffington Post, another of BuzzFeed’s subsidiaries.
The bulk of BuzzFeed’s reporting will now be done under The Huffington Post, a leftist outlet with “a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms,” Peretti said.
BuzzFeed has struggled to make a profit, and its news division added to the parent company’s financial woes.
“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,” Peretti said.
“I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today,” he continued. “I’ve learned from these mistakes, and the team moving forward has learned from them as well.”
BuzzFeed News won one Pulitzer prize, awarded in 2021, for its reporting on the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province.
The news division is also well-known for being the first outlet to publish the infamous Steele Dossier that contained unfounded rumors and innuendo about former President Donald Trump. The dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign for opposition research, was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to surveil the former president’s 2016 campaign.
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