NEW YORK (AP) – Buzzfeed announced Tuesday that it has fired 45 reporters, editors and producers of the newly acquired HuffPost.
HuffPost Executive Editor Hillary Frey, the website’s executive editor, and Executive Editor Louise Roug also resigned over the layoffs, Buzzfeed said.
The layoffs come just three weeks after Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, the media outlet founded in 2005 as The Huffington Post, from Verizon Media.
“We have never had a fair chance to prove our worth,” the HuffPost union said in a statement.
According to excerpts released by the company, Jonah Peretti, CEO of Buzzfeed, told his employees in a meeting that “We are going to restructure HuffPost today to accelerate the path to profitability. Sadly, that includes workforce reductions, and a number of talented colleagues will be laid off in the coming days. ”
Peretti said that “losses were more than $ 20 million last year, and would be comparable this year without intervention.” While BuzzFeed is a profitable business, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses. ”
HuffPost Canada will be closed during the restructuring.
The union said that nearly 30 percent of its members are affected by the layoffs.
“We are devastated and furious, especially after a tiring year of fighting a pandemic and working from home,” the union said.
Many of the laid-off workers complained about the loss of their jobs on social media after many years, and objected to the way they were told that the password for joining the remote meeting was a variation of ‘spring is here’, which blinded them. because of what would come later.
Reporter Rowaida Abdelaziz called it “an absolutely cruel and cruel day at HuffPost. I am speechless.”