BuzzFeed announced Thursday that it was shutting its news division. The company said the move is part of the process of reducing staff which is being brought down by 15 per cent. The shutting down of the newsroom signals the end of one of the most notable news websites of the internet era.
“We are reducing our workforce by approximately 15 per cent today… and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News,” chief executive Jonah Peretti wrote in an email sent to the staff.
“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 acknowledged that since he loved the work and mission of Buzzfeed News, he had “overinvested” in it. “This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media,” he wrote in the memo.
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