The Buzzfeed Class of 2019

In the past week, Buzzfeed publicly announced that it would be laying off 15% of its staff in a new round of layoffs. Buzzfeed joins Huffington Post, Yahoo, Gannett and AOL in a month of over 1,000 layoffs across the media industry. Let the heart palpitations begin.

As someone who works in the extremely vague and ever-evolving world of “digital media,” it’s a scary thing to hear. Buzzfeed was at the top of its game a few years ago. I remember friends clamoring to get a referral there. Now, it feels like the publishing/digital media world has fully opened Pandora’s box (but I have a hunch it was already an ittttttty-bit opened).

Buzzfeed, Yahoo, AOL, Gannett and HuffPost are releasing a fury of talent back into the creative ecosystem. I’m talking about talent across every division. Creative producers who know how to market ideas. Strategists who know how to communicate what an audience feels with the product being created. Videographers and writers who know how to say and show a narrative to an audience with a .02 second attention span. Anchors and news editors who are persistent enough to find the truth and brave enough to share it with the world.

Buzzfeed isn’t special because of its listicles or food videos or recaps of Twitter celeb feuds with a play-by-play breakdown (they’re great though) - it has a “relatability” through-line in every piece of its content, which is directly tied to the creative thinking and data-minded teams behind it.

I can’t wait to see what the Buzzfeed Class of 2019 creates, builds, produces and changes.

Maybe Buzzfeed will still be around to write about it.

P.S. If you or anyone you know has been let go in these recent media layoffs, I’d love to chat and see how I can help.