First off: BuzzFeed News IS NOT BuzzFeed.com. It is a separate division under BuzzFeed, Inc.
BuzzFeed.com will still exist. Those listicles people love to hate will still exist. So everyone calm down. I’m seeing too many people celebrate.
Anyway!
BuzzFeed shut down BuzzFeed News after 11 years, winning a Pulitzer, and publishing the infamous Donald Trump dossier filled with lies. The division never made money.
CEO Jonah Peretti told employees at BuzzFeed not affected by any changes will reduce its “workforce by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News.” The company will also reduce “headcounts” in its international markets.
Peretti admitted he overinvested in BuzzFeed News. He blamed his love for the division’s “work and mission” for not accepting “that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”
“More broadly, I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer we needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today,” Peretti continued. “Our mission, our impact on culture, and our audience is what matters most, but we need a stronger business to protect and sustain this important work.”
You mean a company needs to make a profit to stay in business? Weird!
You mean social media isn’t as big of an outreach as people think? You mean social media isn’t real life? Weird!
HuffPost and BuzzFeed will have some roles for the reporters let go from the news division. BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost in 2020
Peretti said, “We will concentrate our news efforts in HuffPost, a brand that is profitable with a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms.”
AI will become a prime focus at BuzzFeed:
Furthermore, Peretti told the remaining staff that he would be focusing more of the company’s energy going forward on AI. “We will empower our editorial teams at all of our brands to do the very best creative work and build an interface where that work can be repacked and brought to advertisers more effectively,” he said. “And we will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI, and cultural moments that can only happen across BuzzFeed, Complex, HuffPost, Tasty and First We Feast.”The news came on the same day that Insider, another digital media outlet that has been experimenting with AI, decided to slash 10 percent of its workforce.
Ben Smith, the division’s first editor-in-chief, told CNN that closing BuzzFeed News think it makes it “clear the relationship between news publishers and social media is pretty much over.”
BuzzFeed News was born in 2012 during the presidential election.
The division won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for its “stories that used satellite imagery to report on the Chinese government’s detention of Muslims.”
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