NEW YORK (AP) – Buzzfeed announced Tuesday that it has fired 45 reporters, editors and producers from the newly acquired HuffPost.
HuffPost executive editor Hillary Frey, the website’s executive editor, and executive editor Louise Roug also resigned because of the layoffs, Buzzfeed said.
The layoffs came just three weeks after Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, a media outlet founded in 2005 as the Huffington Post from Verizon Media.
“We have never had the right blow to prove our worth,” the HuffPost union said in a statement.
According to excerpts from the company, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti told employees at a meeting that “we will start restructuring HuffPost today to pursue its path to profitability. Unfortunately, this includes staff reductions, and a number of talented colleagues will be laid off in the coming days. ”
Peretti said that “the losses last year exceeded 20 million dollars and would be similar this year without intervention. Although BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we do not have the resources to bear another two years of losses. ”
HuffPost Canada will be closed as part of the restructuring.
The union said the layoffs included nearly 30 percent of its members.
“We are devastated and angry, especially after a tiring year of covering a pandemic and working from home,” the union’s statement said.
Many of the fired employees complained that they lost their jobs on social networks after several years and opposed the way they were told, saying that the password for entering the remote meeting is a variant of “spring is here ”, making them blind. through what would come later.
Reporter Rowaida Abdelaziz called it “an absolutely cruel and brutal day at HuffPost. I have no words.”