BuzzFeed is slashing its workforce by 35% under new owner Byron Allen
Byron Allen’s majority stake in BuzzFeed has produced the predictable result: 180 workers, 35% of the staff, are now out of a job at the once-viral media company.
Billionaire Byron Allen took control of BuzzFeed earlier this year and immediately began the familiar ritual of cost-cutting. The company best known for listicles, quizzes, and oddball videos is now laying off 180 employees, a 35% reduction across all its brands.
The move confirms what many observers have long suspected: even the most meme-savvy digital publishers cannot escape the brutal economics that have hollowed out legacy media. BuzzFeed’s traffic and revenue models, once celebrated as the future of journalism, have proven unsustainable without constant staff reductions.
Allen, who built his fortune in television syndication, is applying the same discipline to the internet-native newsroom he now owns. The cuts spare no corner of the operation, signaling that the era of freewheeling experimentation at BuzzFeed is over.
What remains is a smaller, presumably leaner company tasked with proving it can generate real returns. The 180 departed employees represent more than one-third of the workforce, a scale of contraction that leaves little room for nostalgia about BuzzFeed’s viral glory days.
The speed and size of the layoffs under new ownership raise an obvious question: if a 35% reduction is the price of survival, how much of the original BuzzFeed formula was ever viable to begin with?
Original reporting: LA Times.
Original reporting: LA Times, Business.
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