Buzzfeed News, once a shining star of digital journalism, has announced it will shut its award-winning news division for good, laying off about 60 journalists in a move its founding editor, Ben Smith, described as “the end of the marriage between social media and news”.
Buzzfeed – for a few years regarded as a top exponent of viral news – has been struggling to maintain its buzz of late. The cheeky and provocative – if at times annoying – provider of endless listicles and outrageous clickbait headlines is reported to have fallen into financial difficulties.
The site’s founder, Jonah Peretti, is reported to have told staff: “I made the decision to over-invest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”
