By The FirstIn a shocking move, BuzzFeed News is being shut down as part of a company-wide restructuring effort. The announcement was made by BuzzFeed Inc. CEO and co-founder Jonah Peretti, who sent out a note to staff on Tuesday.
According to Peretti, the decision to shutter BuzzFeed News was part of a larger round of layoffs that will see 15% of staffers cut across the company.
“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 organization,” he wrote.
Peretti also revealed that moving forward, BuzzFeed will be consolidating its news brands into a single entity under the HuffPost banner. Buzzfeed News acquired Huffington Post in February 2021.
According to Peretti, HuffPost is profitable and has a loyal direct front page audience, making it the natural choice for BuzzFeed’s news operations.
In an effort to soften the blow for affected employees, Peretti announced that both HuffPost and BuzzFeed Dot Com will be opening select roles for members of BuzzFeed News. However, it remains to be seen how many staffers will be able to find new positions within the company.
Buzzfeed News was established in 2011 as a division of the popular online entertainment platform, Buzzfeed. In the beginning, the site primarily produced listicles and viral videos but later began to produce investigative journalism in 2012. The outlet has won numerous awards for its investigative journalism, including a Pulitzer Prize for a series exposing China’s mass detention of Muslims.
