On Thursday, Buzzfeed News announced that it would be shutting down, with CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO leaving the company and layoffs being announced.
In an email from Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, said, "we are reducing our workforce by approximately 15 percent today across our Business, Content, Tech, and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing Buzzfeed News.
"Additionally, we are proposing headcount reductions in some international markets," the email added.
Peretti said that Hernandez and Baesler have left the company, with President Marcela Martin taking on "responsibility for all revenue functions effective immediately."
"While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund Buzzfeed News…" Peretti wrote.
Peretti stated that "HuffPost and Buzzfeed Dot Com have signaled that they will open a number of select roles for members of Buzzfeed News. These rules will be aligned with those divisions’ business goals and match the skills and strengths of many of Buzzfeed NEws’s editors and reporters."
"We raised this idea with the News Guild this morning and look forward to discussing it further. Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience."
Peretti explained that the decision to shut down the news branch of the company came about because of the pandemic, "a fading SPAC marked that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising marked and ongoing audience and platform shifts."
"Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending," he added.
Peretti wrote that the "integration process of Buzzfeed and Complex… should have been executed faster and better."
"The macro environment is tough, but we had the potential to generate much more revenue than we delivered over the past 12 months."
The CEO said that he "overintest[ed] in Buzzfeed News because I love their work and mission so much," and that "I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability."
"Please know that we exhausted many other cost saving measures to preserve as many jobs as possible."
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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