BuzzFeed is buying HuffPost from Verizon as part of a bigger deal that has the wireless giant investing in the digital-media company.
BuzzFeed and Verizon did not disclose terms of the deal. Verizon will be a minority shareholder in BuzzFeed and the two companies will partner on content and ads.
A downturn in advertising due to the pandemic has hurt both traditional and digital-only media organizations, resulting in layoffs and furloughs. Digital newsrooms had been consolidating even before the pandemic, including Vox’s purchase of New York Magazine and its digital arms.
Verizon came to own HuffPost, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, through its acquisition of AOL in 2015. The country’s biggest wireless provider also bought Yahoo in 2017 in an attempt to build a digital media business that could challenge Facebook. That Verizon Media business has struggled.
BuzzFeed is known for its quizzes and lists but also invested in its news division. Its founder and CEO, Jonah Peretti, also co-founded HuffPost, then known as The Huffington Post, in 2005. AOL bought it for $315 million in 2011.
“I have vivid memories of growing HuffPost into a major news outlet in its early years, but BuzzFeed is making this acquisition because we believe in the future of HuffPost and the potential it has to continue to define the media landscape for years to come,” Peretti said in a statement. “With the addition of HuffPost, our media network will have more users, spending significantly more time with our content than any of our peers.”
Peretti said in a memo to BuzzFeed employees that he expects the deal to close at the beginning of 2021.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is a total yawn. It’s been almost forever since I read HuffPost, and I’m really not into BuzzFeed’s listings/offerings. I’d rather spend time looking at serious news and not tabloid stuff.
Now, if you give me a news article about the total demolition of Fox News or Breitbart or the Reich-Wing Propaganda Source Du Jour, then I’ll read that.
OT but I have to share
I read HuffPost regularly. For me, it supplements TPM. HuffPost often covers events that TPM does not, for example, probably because HuffPost has more staff.
There seems to be no commenting on HuffPost, so I save comments for TPM, for the 3 or 4 people who will read them. What an audience! And, of course, I read TPM for the analyses of events by the Editors.
What Buzzfeed will do with HuffPost is hard to guess. Maybe nothing.
What does Arianna Huffington have to say about this? Have any reporters asked her? I suppose she cashed out long ago. As I remember, HuffPost mostly relied in its early days on unpaid volunteers. Some of them should get a piece of this pie, perhaps.