Less than a month after acquiring rival HuffPost, BuzzFeed has announced it will lay off 47 workers and shutter HuffPost Canada altogether.
BuzzFeed announced the deal in November, acquiring an ownership stake in HuffPost from Verizon. The deal saw Verizon retain a minority stake, and the two companies agreed to cross-syndicate each other’s content.
Just three weeks after closing the deal, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced the changes, impacting 47 employees, including eight managers. The remaining 35 are presumably journalists. Peretti said the cuts would help HuffPost break even for the year, and even pave the way toward profit.
“Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” Peretti said.
“We want to ensure the homepage remains a top destination on the internet,” he added. “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’s announcement is just the latest example of the hit media companies have taken during the pandemic.