Shockwaves as BuzzFeed Closes News Division, Cuts 15% of All Staff

BuzzFeed, a company that won a Pulitzer prize, will close its news division as they try to reduce their staff by 15%. According to memo that was sent to employees, these cuts will also affect their business, content creation, tech and support teams. They might even cut jobs in some countries around the world too.

Peretti told the staff that he thought it was important to invest in the news section but didn’t realize soon enough that there wasn’t enough money left to keep it up. He said they’ve learned from these mistakes and now need to make changes and improvements for a better future.

BuzzFeed, which was started by Peretti in 2006 and first known for its listicles and online quizzes, just announced that it will only have one news brand left: HuffPost. This change comes close to when BuzzFeed said it had to lay off 12% of its employees because of the bad financial conditions. Even so, BuzzFeed still won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for international reporting, showing that it is successful at publishing news.