Buzzfeed furloughing 68 staffers for three months, more cuts planned

Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti is going for a second round of furloughs among other cost-cutting measures in a bid to keep the news organization’s coronavirus-related losses under $20 million this year.

Starting on May Peretti will furlough 68 US employees for three months. Some overseas staffers will also be furloughed over varying periods.

Peretti will negotiate with the News Guild of New York about additional cuts to Buzzfeed News, the side of the Buzzfeed business that reports on news — versus cat videos and listicles — and which is unionized.

“The global economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic has inflicted increasingly negative impact on our business,” Peretti said in a memo Wednesday, following an all-hands-on-deck meeting.

“In recent weeks we have been confronted with even greater revenue declines than expected,” Peretti said. “Based on our projections and our goal to keep losses under $20M, we determined we must further reduce costs to sustain Buzzfeed through this crisis and positing ourselves for eventual recovery.”

“We will begin a negotiation with the News Guild about the need to reduce costs in News,” said Peretti.

“While we weren’t planning for News to be profitable, we were hoping to minimize losses this year and increase our efforts at monetization. Unfortunately, given the current crisis, that will no longer be possible without further cuts similar to what we’re doing across other parts of the company.”

It’s the second round of cuts at Buzzfeed as ad revenue has evaporated due to the pandemic. In the first round of cuts unveiled in late March, Peretti said he would forgo pay until the pandemic was over while cutting employees pay on a sliding scale ranging from 5 percent for employees making less than $65,000 up to 10 percent for employees over $90,000 and 25 percent for top executives.

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