#BuzzFeed takes buzzsaw to newly acquired HuffPost

Just three weeks after finalizing a deal to buy HuffPost, Jonah Peretti’s BuzzFeed is taking a buzzsaw to the left-leaning news and culture site.

BuzzFeed on Tuesday said it made a series of cuts in HuffPost that will result in 47 US jobs lost, including Executive Editor Hillary Frey and Executive Editor International Louise Roug.

The Canadian version of the website will also be shuttered.

Peretti told staffers that the decision was made to “fast-track the path to profitability” for the money-losing website, HuffPost reported. The site’s losses totaled around $20 million in 2020, he said.

“Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” Peretti reportedly said.

The HuffPost union, organized as part of the Writers Guild of America, East, blasted the layoffs on Tuesday.

“Today, we learned that 33 of our colleagues — nearly 30 percent of our unit — will be laid off. We are devastated and infuriated, particularly after an exhausting year of covering a pandemic and working from home,” said the union. “This is also happening less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed. We never got a fair shot to prove our worth.”

Former HuffPost owner Verizon recognized the union in 2016 and agreed to a new three-year contract in 2019, which remains in effect and will result in severance for the laid-off staffers, the union said.

BuzzFeed agreed in November to buy the site Peretti founded in 2005 along with Arianna Huffington, Andrew Breitbart and venture capitalist Kenneth Lerer.

It was launched as a left-leaning counterweight to the Drudge Report, which was then at the height of its popularity. But the site, which officially shortened its name to HuffPost in 2017, has lost money for most of its existence — leading to last year’s sale by Verizon, which acquired it as part of its $4.4 billion acquisition of parent company AOL in 2015.

Terms of the all-stock transaction between Verizon and BuzzFeed were not revealed, but Verizon maintained a minority stake in the site and has also pledged an investment into BuzzFeed as part of the deal.

Peretti will be CEO of the combined operations but says he will run them as “separate distinct news organizations.”

“We want to ensure the homepage remains a top destination on the internet,” Peretti reportedly told staffers. “We also want to maintain high traffic, preserve your most powerful journalism, lean more deeply into politics and breaking news, and build a stronger business for affiliate revenue and shopping content.”

BuzzFeed made deep staff cuts at the start of the pandemic, but he said it had returned to profitability.

Mark Schoofs, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, is seeking a new-editor-in chief at HuffPost, who will report to him. The post has been vacant for a year since Lydia Polgreen jumped to Spotify’s podcasting unit Gimlet Media in March 2020. Frey had been overseeing it since then.