Thursday, January 24, 2019

Not fake news: BuzzFeed laying off 15 percent of staff

A fake news provider is getting what it deserves.

From Deadline Hollywood:
It certainly has been a tough week at BuzzFeed. A week after Robert Mueller’s office raised doubts about the news org's report that Donald Trump ordered his lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress comes word that the one-time poster child for pure-digital growth plans to lay off a reported 200 staffers, or 15% of its work force.

Co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti sent a memo to staff this afternoon announcing the job cuts, which will hit the web content and international units including the Ben Smith-led news division beginning next week.

"Over the past few months, we've done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms," he wrote (read the memo in full below). "We've developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model. We are confident the changes we are making will put us on a firm foundation and allow us to invest and grow sustainably for years to come."

This will mark the third round of cuts at the digital news producer in 14 months, following layoffs in November 2017 and in September. The former consisted of about 100 job losses, mainly in its "business unit."

No comments: