BuzzFeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning digital media company, is shutting down its news division and cutting another 15% of its staff across the company, including its business, content, tech, and administrative teams. The company has approximately 1,200 employees, and the layoffs mark the third round of job cuts this year. According to co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti, the company overinvested in its news division, but did not recognize early enough that the financial support needed to sustain operations was not there. Peretti wrote in a memo to staff that he has learned from these mistakes and that the changes and improvements the company is making are necessary steps to building a better future.
The decision to shut down the news division comes amidst a challenging year for digital advertising, cutting into the profitability of major tech companies from Google to Facebook. Job cuts have rolled through the tech industry, and more are expected. BuzzFeed’s shutdown marks the end of the marriage between news and social media, according to Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor from 2011 to 2020 and now editor in chief of Semafor.
BuzzFeed News won its first Pulitzer in 2021, in international reporting, for a series by Megha Rajagopalan, Alison Killing, and Christo Buschek on the infrastructure built by the Chinese government for the mass detention of Muslims. Despite the shutdown of the news division, all of its work will be preserved and available within the BuzzFeed network. The company is also working to ensure that any stories currently in progress will be published and promoted on BuzzFeed properties.
The announcement comes just a few months after BuzzFeed said that it would be cutting 12% of its workforce, citing worsening economic conditions. In addition to the news division, Christian Baesler, the company’s chief operating officer, and Edgar Hernandez, its chief revenue officer, are leaving after they assist with the restructuring. The company will have one remaining news brand, HuffPost, according to Peretti. Journalists who previously worked at BuzzFeed lamented the end of the news division, including Ben Smith, who made the controversial decision in 2017 to publish a “dossier” of information about then-President Donald Trump.