BuzzFeed Is Shutting Down An Integral Part Of Its Business
BuzzFeed one its most prominent sectors of business, forcing long time employees out of the company altogether.
This article is more than 2 years old
Though Buzzfeed has had extensive traffic to its site for years, the listicle website is making some cuts in the new year. Major editors for the company are taking buyouts to leave the news division. The buyouts may be Buzzfeed’s recent financial strategy to push its profitability and keep traffic on the frivolous website.
For Buzzfeed’s newsroom, the company offers substantial buyouts for staff to leave the company. These voluntary allowances were not just provided for writers but editors who’ve had positions at the company for years. Top editors like Mark Schoofs, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, and deputy editor and chief Tom Namako are resigning. Executive Editors like Ariel Kaminer also took the money to leave the company.
Buyouts are explicitly going to people working in the Buzzfeed News sector. Though winning a Pulitzer Prize, the Buzzfeed News section has yielded low traffic and has been statistically unprofitable. Minor profits have pushed Buzzfeed executives to incentivize workers to leave or switch departments. A spokesperson for Buzzfeed, Matt Mittenthal, commented that only 35 employees would be eligible for the company buyouts.
Buzzfeed News writers aren’t the only employees who are being cut from the team. 1.7% of staff are being let go from the media giant, roughly 25 people out of 1,524 total employees. This response likely comes from Buzzfeed’s sudden drop in share value, declining more than 40% in December of 2021. Though the company had a revenue boost for most of 2021, the share decline and an abysmal projection for 2022’s revenue have threatened the company altogether.
Since the Buzzfeed News department has had a major monetary setback, the media company is looking to shrink the division’s focus. CEO Jonah Peretti stated that he wanted to examine what “coverage our audiences connect with the most,” yearning to make Buzzfeed News a more visited page on the site. The intention is to make this division more profitable to the company, focusing more on celebrities, culture, and television.
Though Peretti will keep Buzzfeed News, many shareholders have advised against it. A few large shareholders in the company pressured Peretti to end the news division, citing its lack of profitability. Since the conference was private, it’s unclear which shareholders urged him to eliminate Buzzfeed News. An anonymous shareholder told CNBC that closing the news division could add up to $300 million to the company’s plummeting market value.
Instead, Peretti wants to make the newsroom profitable, which means significant layoffs to other staff members outside Buzzfeed. Last year, he laid off more than 70 employees from the Huffington Post, a company he acquired after purchasing Verizon Media. Peretti’s justification for this was to manage costs, which he’s planning to do with the latest Buzzfeed staff cuts. After two years of troubling losses, the media outlet’s CEO attempts to reverse the downfalls by restructuring the site’s coverage and budget.
Buzzfeed is a popular site for listicles and frivolous quizzes, not for its extensive journalism. The site’s initial branding could be why its newsroom is getting a complete overall, while the company continues to push the news writers out.
