More broadly, I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today.
#Fishes artclip free#
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. The macro environment is tough, but we had the potential to generate much more revenue than we delivered over the past 12 months.Īdditionally, I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. In particular, the integration process of BuzzFeed and Complex, and the unification of our two business organizations, should have been executed faster and better. Our job is to adapt, change, improve, and perform despite the challenges in the world. Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending.īut I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better despite these circumstances. We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts. I want to explain a little more about why we’ve come to these deeply painful decisions. Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience. We raised this idea with the News Guild this morning and look forward to discussing it further. These roles will be aligned with those divisions’ business goals and match the skills and strengths of many of BuzzFeed News’s editors and reporters. HuffPost and BuzzFeed Dot Com have signaled that they will open a number of select roles for members of BuzzFeed News. As a result, we will engage with the News Guild about our cost reduction plans and what this will mean for the affected union members. While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization. The changes the Business Organization is making today are focused on reducing layers in their organization, increasing speed and effectiveness of pitches, streamlining our product mix, doubling down on creators, and beginning to bring AI enhancements to every aspect of our sales process. We will share more on their plans in the Business All Hands next week (and we are extending an invite company-wide). I have great confidence in this revenue leadership team, and the early plans I’ve seen from them to accelerate performance from our Business Org. Globally, International Sales will move under Rich Reid, Head of International and Head of Studio, also reporting to Marcela. In the US, Andrew Guendjoian is our new Head of Sales, and Ken Blom will continue in his role as Head of Revenue Operations.
Marcela Martin, our President, will take on responsibility for all revenue functions effective immediately. Christian will be with us through the end of April, and Edgar through the end of May to help with the transition. I’m grateful to both of them for their passion and dedication to Complex and to BuzzFeed, Inc. For BuzzFeed News, we have begun discussions with the News Guild about these actions.Īs part of today’s changes, both our CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO Christian Baesler have made the decision to exit the company. If you are receiving this note from me, you are not impacted by today’s changes. Impacted employees (other than those in BuzzFeed News) will receive an email from HR shortly. Additionally, we are proposing headcount reductions in some international markets. We are reducing our workforce by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News. I am writing to announce some difficult news.
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