Buzzfeed Closes HuffPost Australia And HuffPost UK News Operation
*This article has been amended to reflect updated information
After closing down HuffPost Canada and Quebec, and making 47 US HuffPost staff redundant, Buzzfeed has also decided to close HuffPost Australia.
The Guardian has reported that UK staff were told that their national news operations will be shut down. Buzzfeed only acquired Huff Post from Verizon a month ago.
In the UK office, 16 of the 29 editorial team, including editor-in-chief Jess Brammar, have been told that they are at risk of being made redundant.
Brammar tweeted yesterday about how proud she was of the news team.
Before I came to HuffPost UK three years ago I felt frustrated about how newsrooms seemed to be full of Oxbridge grads. We aren’t. I had a passion to build a newsroom that looks, sounds and acts like the country it is reporting on. I’m proud every day to run this team.
— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) March 17, 2021
A number of former reporters have tweeted their sadness at the news, commending the outlet’s work.
On Wednesday evening, Alicia Vrajlal, HuffPost Australia‘s editor tweeted “HuffPost Australia won’t have a local team after Friday”.
She also shared how proud she was of the work HuffPost Australia has done on race, diversity, and inclusion since the brand was relaunched in late 2019.
3) Thank you to all of the people who've trusted me with their stories. There aren't enough places in Aussie media that provide a platform to elevate such underrepresented voices, & so I’ll really miss my job and only hope the media landscape will evolve and become more inclusive
— Alicia Vrajlal (@LeeshieV) March 17, 2021
In a statement, Buzzfeed said, “Buzzfeed has announced that it’s begun a restructuring of HuffPost in order to break even this year and fast-track its path to profitability. As part of these changes, we have begun a consultation process in Australia to propose focusing on a global content with a smaller team.”
Last year, Buzzfeed disbanded both their UK and Australian news operations. They also made a number of redundancies from their US news team in 2019.
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