BuzzFeed News’ top editors step down following major job cut plans
BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs, as well as his deputy Tom Namako, have stepped down this afternoon following internal announcements that job cuts were coming across the board.
In an internal memo, CEO Jonah Peretti said that the outlet will be downsizing through a mix of cuts and voluntary buy-outs, with reductions of around 1.7 per cent moving forward.
This has been confirmed by Morning Wire with the BuzzFeed team, and comes just months after it made its underwhelming debut as a public company after merging with a special-purpose acquisition firm.
The news site ended up receiving just $16m of the $280m estimated from the Spac.
At the time of the IPO, analyst at Enders Analysis Alice Pickthall told Morning Wire that it was “unsurprisingly disappointing for the many other advertising-reliant digital native media companies watching”.
She explained how there was an inherent danger for companies like BuzzFeed in shifting from the “media” label to the “tech” one. Pickthall said it was always going to struggle to live up to investor expectations.
The company also announced a 24 per cent revenue growth for the year to 31 December 2021 this morning, from $321.3m (£242m) in 2020 to $397.6m (£300m).
However, costs in 2021 went up quicker than revenues, however, growing nearly 37% from $309.2m (£233.1m) in 2020 to $422.7m (£318.7) last year.
In 2021, the company posted $398m in revenue — 31 per cent below the $520m it had projected earlier