‘Ferocious travesty’: BuzzFeed News shuts down amid staff lay-offs

Popular digital news site BuzzFeed will close down for good, with current and former employees sharing their shock at the news.

Current and former employees have shared their dismay at the shock announcement that popular digital news site BuzzFeed is shutting down.

The closure of the award-winning news division comes amid major lay-offs within its parent company, with 15 per cent of the total workforce – or 180 workers – losing their jobs.

The grim news was shared by founder Jonah Peretti, who said “the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News” after shaking up the media industry for about a decade.

The revelation sent BuzzFeed’s already grim share price plunging by more than 20 per cent.

He revealed the decision had been made as a result of difficult conditions caused by the pandemic and then the economy, followed by a slump in advertising and evolving reader habits.

“I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much,” Mr Peretti said.

“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.”

BuzzFeed News is closing forever. Picture: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America/ Getty Images via AFP

BuzzFeed, which also owns fellow news site HuffPost, exploded in popularity in the early 2010s, carving out a niche with fun listcicles and quizzes as well as punching above its weight when it came to hard-hitting, investigative journalism.

It grew to become a worldwide phenomenon and won a coveted Pulitzer Prize for journalism, but it was not enough to save the division, with Mr Peretti revealing he had “exhausted many other cost-saving measures to preserve as many jobs as possible”.

Staff were informed of the closure during an emotional conference call on Thursday morning US time.

The announcement sparked an outpouring of emotion among journalists, including past and present employees.

“What a ferocious travesty and a huge loss to journalism,” former BuzzFeed News reporter John Paczkowski posted on Twitter.

“Absolutely devastated for @buzzfeednews. You have to understand that some of the most talented people in our industry were there fighting to keep it alive,” LA Times managing editor Sara Yasin tweeted.

Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti poses in front of BuzzFeed screen on Times Square during BuzzFeed Inc.'s Listing Day at Nasdaq in New York City. Picture: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images North America/AFP

“BuzzFeed News deserved so much better, and has for a long time,” NBC News executive editor Tom Namako added.

The news comes just months after the company announced it would use artificial intelligence to create content, which initially saw its share price skyrocket by more than 150 per cent before sharply falling back down again.

Sadly, BuzzFeed is not alone in its struggles, with many major media and tech companies announcing job cuts in the current tough climate.

This week, Insider announced it was cutting its staff by 10 per cent as “economic headwinds that have hurt many of our clients and partners are also affecting us”, with CNN, NBC, MSNBC and Vox Media also suffering from recent lay-offs.

The closure of BuzzFeed News comes after a 2020 announcement that it would shut down struggling news operations in Australia and the UK.

The Australian branch of the site launched in 2014 during a period of expansion across the globe.

But in a 2020 statement, a company spokesperson confirmed local news coverage was coming to an end.

“Both for economic and strategic reasons, we are going to focus on news that hits big in the United States during this difficult period,” the statement reads.

“Therefore, we will notify staff in the UK and Australia that we are not planning to cover local news in those countries. We will be consulting with employees on our plans regarding furloughs and stand-downs in these regions.”

Just a year prior, 200 global BuzzFeed employees lost their jobs in 2019, including 11 Australian workers.