NEW YORK (AP) – Buzzfeed announced Tuesday that it has fired 45 journalists, 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 from the layoffs, Buzzfeed said.
The layoffs come just three weeks after Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, the media outlet founded in 2005 as Verizon Media’s Huffington Post.
“We never got a fair shot to prove our worth,” the HuffPost union said in a statement.
According to excerpts released by the company, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti told employees at a meeting that “we will begin restructuring HuffPost today to accelerate its path to profitability. Unfortunately, this includes staff reductions and several talented colleagues will be fired over the next few days. ”
Peretti said “losses last year topped $ 20 million and would be similar this year without intervention. While BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to bear another two years of losses.”
HuffPost Canada will close during the restructuring.
The union said the layoffs included nearly 30 percent of its members.
“We are devastated and enraged, especially after a grueling year of covering a pandemic and working from home,” the union statement said.
Many of the fired employees lamented losing their jobs on social media after many years, and objected to the way they were told, saying the password to enter the remote meeting was a variation of “the spring is already here, ”which made them blind. so it would come later.
Journalist Rowaida Abdelaziz called it “an absolutely cruel and brutal day at HuffPost. I’m speechless.”