BuzzFeed Announces Deep Cuts in HuffPost Staff Following Acquisition

BuzzFeed announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom on Tuesday, three weeks after Verizon Media’s acquisition of HuffPost in February.

Hillary Frey, the site’s executive editor, and Louise Roug, International’s executive editor, will leave the restructuring.

HuffPost Canada will also close operations later this month.

A deal between BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Verizon Media was first made public in November. Verizon Media stated at the time that BuzzFeed and HuffPost would operate as “ separate, separate news organizations ” with their own websites and editorial staff, while Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed, led the combined company.

Peretti told executives that the decision, which will affect 47 US employees, was made to “accelerate the path to profitability” for HuffPost, allowing the company to break even this year and eventually turn a profit.

Peretti co-founded HuffPost in 2005 with the site’s namesake, Arianna Huffington, along with Andrew Breitbart and Kenneth Lerer, before starting BuzzFeed the following year.

The HuffPost Union, organized as part of the Writers Guild of America, East, condemned the restructuring effort in a statement:

Today we learned that 33 of our colleagues – nearly 30% of our unit – will be fired. We are devastated and furious, especially after a tiring year of covering up a pandemic and working from home. This also happens less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed. We have never had a fair chance to prove our worth. These layoffs underscore the importance of forming a union and advocating for our colleagues. We are pleased that we are protected by a collective bargaining agreement and that our colleagues receive severance pay. Our union will continue to fight to make HuffPost a more fair and just workplace, including pushing for clear and accountable commitments to hire and promote more people of color and transparency around pay equality.

Mark Schoofs, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, said last year that a search for a new HuffPost editor-in-chief would begin immediately, and Peretti said on Tuesday that the search had reached its final stage.

Frey has headed the US newsroom since Lydia Polgreen resigned as editor-in-chief a year ago to join podcasting company Gimlet Media.

“The group of finalists we are considering is extremely strong, diverse and committed to the future of HuffPost,” said Peretti. “We expect to be able to make an offer and an announcement in the coming weeks.”