KARMA STRIKES? BuzzFeed Lays Off 15% Of It’s Staff!

And here's more, from CNN:

BuzzFeed is preparing to lay off about 15% of its employees. The coming contraction is the latest example of a media company making cutbacks in a difficult operating environment.

The reductions will affect multiple departments, including the news division, according to sources familiar with the matter.

BuzzFeed has about 1,450 employees, so about 220 will be leaving, one of the sources confirmed.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti confirmed the sharp cut on Wednesday after reporters from other news outlets began inquiring.

The layoffs, he said in an internal memo, are part of a broader effort to "put us on a firm foundation and allow us to invest and grow sustainably for years to come."

After "extensive work" in the past few months, "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," Peretti wrote.

He said the "restructuring" will reduce costs and "improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again. These changes will allow us to be the clear winner in the market as the economics of digital media continue to improve."

Staffers at BuzzFeed have been bracing for bad news for days. Employees had learned senior editors were being flown into BuzzFeed's New York City offices and cuts to staff were widely speculated about internally. Executives were trying to wait until next week to announce the restructuring, but the speculation and leaks sped up the timeline.

"This is going to be a tough week," BuzzFeed News editor Ben Smith said in an email to staffers as the news trickled out on Wednesday evening.

"I realize that you will have a lot of questions about specifics. We're committed to answering them, but we aren't going to be able to until next week," he wrote. "Thank you for bearing with us."

The BuzzFeed contraction comes during a turbulent time in digital media, and the journalism industry as a whole. Verizon announced on Wednesday that it would cut 7% of staff from its media division which is comprised of brands that include Yahoo, AOL, and HuffPost. Layoffs also hit several newspapers owned by Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain, on Wednesday.

And confirmed by Hollywood Reporter:

BuzzFeed is laying off 15 percent of its workforce, about 215 people, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

CEO Jonah Peretti on Wednesday sent a memo to staffers with the subject line "Difficult Changes" in which he explained that efforts to diversify revenue weren't enough to help the company achieve profitability.

"Unfortunately, revenue growth by itself isn't enough to be successful in the long run," he wrote. "The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our destiny, without ever need to raise funding again."

The cuts, expected to be company-wide, are set to take place next week. The staff reductions will give BuzzFeed a faster path to profitability, a spokesperson said. 

"Rumors started flying" about the layoffs on Tuesday in the company's New York and Washington, D.C.-based offices. "Lots of people are talking about it," said an employee on the basis of anonymity. About 1,450 staffers work at BuzzFeed. 

In the memo, Peretti noted that he's "never thought about my job as 'just business.' I care about the people at BuzzFeed more than anything other than my family. This will be a tough week for all of us and I realize it will be much worse for the people losing their jobs." The exec added that he was sorry to the people who would be let go. 

BuzzFeed employees are not new to the cost-cutting process, but reporters and editors in the U.S. and at BuzzFeed News have largely been spared from previous rounds of cuts. The news division is expected to be impacted by the cuts but isn't the division most affected. 

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BuzzFeed parted ways with about 100 employees in November 2017, which Peretti positioned as an evolution of the company, though those affected worked mostly in advertising sales and business operations.

"Our business is more diverse and balanced than it was a year ago and, very importantly, for the first time a quarter of our annual revenue will come from sources other than direct sold advertising," Peretti wrote in a memo to staff at the time. 

BuzzFeed News, which launched in earnest when the company poached editor-in-chief Ben Smith from Politico in 2012, regularly produces reporting on par with much larger news organizations, such as a Jan. 17 scoop about President Donald Trump and his former fixer Michael Cohen that upended the media-political ecosystem for several days and led to the office of the special counsel issuing a rare statement denying an aspect of the story.

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