BuzzFeed News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning news arm of BuzzFeed.com, is being shut down, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced to staff on Thursday. The shutdown is happening as part of a new wave of layoffs at the company that will reduce the company’s workforce by about 15 percent.
“While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization,” Peretti wrote in a memo to staff the company shared with The Verge. Peretti said they would focus on HuffPost, which it acquired in 2020, as the company’s news brand because the publication is “profitable with a loyal direct front page audience.” Both HuffPost and BuzzFeed plan to open “a…
