Founded in 2006 and quickly became one of the leading online news platform BuzzFeed’s news department is being shut down, according to CEO Jonah Peretti. An internal email announcing the decision to shutter the news division and reduce its business, content, technology, and administration teams by 15%, affecting around 180 people. Mr. Peretti admitted to overinvesting in BuzzFeed News “because I love their work and mission so much.” BuzzFeed will concentrate its journalism operations on HuffPost, which it purchased from Verizon in 2020, while Buzzfeed.com will stay in place. Mr. Peretti launched the digital media firm in 2006, and it plans to go public in December 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). BuzzFeed’s stock price has dropped by 16% to 78 cents. Mr. Peretti confessed that the senior team of the publicly traded corporation.
Mr. Peretti recognized that the executive team of the publicly traded corporation “could have performed better despite the world’s challenges.” The company has began talks on compensation packages with the NewsGuild, a journalist union. The news outlet earned the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2021.
