Insider Lays Off 10% Of Staff As BuzzFeed News Shuts Down: Reports

Insider Inc. is laying off 10% of its staff while another media company, BuzzFeed, has announced that it would shut down its news operations, reports have said.

"The economic headwinds that have hurt many of our clients and partners are also affecting us. Unfortunately, to keep our company healthy and competitive, we need to reduce the size of our team," Insider President Barbara Peng noted in a memo sent to employees Thursday and later posted by The Daily Beast reporter Corbin Bolies on Twitter.

"We tried so hard to avoid taking this step, and we are sorry about the impact it will have on many of you," she continued.

International Insider teams will not be affected by the layoffs, Bolies noted in his report, citing an email sent to staffers by Spriha Srivastava, who supervises U.K. and Singapore bureaus.

According to the report, Peng also said she would work with the Insider Union to "provide clarity on our proposed changes" and establish a bargaining process.

The union reportedly did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Jessica Liebman, Insider's chief people officer, said non-union members affected by the layoffs made up about 5% of the workforce. "The period of limbo will be stressful for people in the union, which is why we want to move as quickly as possible to come to a resolution," she said, as per the report.

Late last month, the Insider Union, which is said to include more than 300 employees, asked the public through The Action Network to help them tell company leadership to "stop targeting our coworkers, guarantee fair pay raises and give us the contract we deserve."

"Management thinks they can keep pushing us around. But we're not going to stand for it," the union said.

Insider revealed last week that writers would begin experimenting with the Microsoft-backed AI language model ChatGPT. When asked if the layoffs were related to the use of the chatbot, a spokesperson for Insider said, "Of course not," as per Gizmodo.

News of Insider's layoffs came on the same day BuzzFeed told employees that it would begin the process of shutting down BuzzFeed News, the media company's news arm.

Aside from shutting down BuzzFeed News, CEO Jonah Peretti also told staffers that the company was reducing its workforce "by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams," according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

In the memo posted on Twitter by the Times' Ben Mullin, Peretti explained that he "overinvested" in BuzzFeed News, adding that this action made him "slow to accept that big platforms wouldn't provide the distribution or financial support" necessary to operate premium journalism targeted at social media.

Peretti also said he has learned from the mistakes he's made and knows that the changes implemented Thursday were necessary to build a better future for the company. He acknowledged that he and the leadership "could have performed better" amid the tech and economic downturn and assured that the company "will do better" moving forward.

Peretti said some affected employees would be offered jobs at BuzzFeed.com and HuffPost, which the CEO referred to as a "profitable" revenue stream.

Insider and BuzzFeed aren't the only media companies that announced layoffs in recent weeks.

At the end of March, ABC News let go of about 50 people as part of the company-wide layoffs conducted by its parent company, Walt Disney Co., a network source told Deadline.

The network source further revealed that some of the affected positions were in higher ranks such as vice president of talent strategy and development, vice president of corporate communications and executive editorial producer.

Also last month, U.S. radio broadcaster Salem Media Group laid off around 3% of its staff, according to RadioInsight. The outlet reported that the company had 1,436 employees as of Feb. 10.

Some of the affected employees who went public about their departure from the radio broadcaster were network director of satellite operations Jim Barto and chief operator of Salem Radio's WFIL/WNTP radio stations Ted Winkler, according to RadioInsight.