Buzzfeed are to axe up to 45 of the news website's 140 UK staff from business and editorial, described as “chilling for the whole media industry”, as it emerges the company can't make the maths work.
The UK arm has reported a pre-tax loss of £3.3m last year despite more than doubling its turnover to £20.5m on the previous year, full financial figures published for the first time by the company in October revealed.
Those at risk include 23 out of 76 newsroom staff, according to Buzzfeed management.
According to media analyst Comscore, traffic to Buzzfeed UK has fallen from 13m unique views at the start of 2015 to 10.3m in October this year.
Laura Davison, NUJ national organiser, said: “The whole union will have been shocked by the scale of what is being put forward and will be rallying behind our members at risk of redundancy.
“At a time when other organisations are investing in digital for the long term, cutting back staff with these skills seems perverse.
She added: “As the union is currently battling with redundancies across local newspaper groups such as Newsquest, it is deeply worrying to see such a trail-blazing digital enterprise to be in such trouble. It has sent a chill throughout the whole industry."
“That is why the union has called for an independent inquiry in the media in the UK. With Google and Facebook hoovering up virtually all digital advertising, there are huge questions to be answered for the future of journalism.”
KK wrote:More grim reading for the newspapers, with the latest figure out for December 2017...
The Sun: 1,480,337 (-8.14% year-on-year decline) The Sun on Sunday: 1,227,015 (-11.28%) Daily Mail: 1,394,385 (-6.5%) The Mail on Sunday: 1,137,024 (-11.46%) Daily Mirror: 581,877 (-18.84%) Sunday Mirror: 493,069 (-20.58%) The Times: 446,204 (flat) The Sunday Times: 735,025 (-7.22%) The Daily Telegraph: 393,310 (-14.51%) The Sunday Telegraph: 303,307 (-15.58%) Daily Express: 364,933 (-6.82%) Sunday Express: (-5.18%) Daily Star: 391,509 (-11.12%) Daily Star Sunday: 239,853 (-6.96%) i: 257,221 (-2.59%) Sunday People: 191,188 (-20.13%) The Observer: 175,401 (-3.7%) The Guardian: 151,625 (-5.88%) London Evening Standard: 867,325 (+2.29%) Metro: 1,471,663 (-0.26%)
I think people have woken up to the fact the Daily Telegraph has completely gone to gooseberry fool. The Times is absolutely kicking their arse.
Bet Osborne's smiling.
Wow, that is grim. You're right about the DT though, imo it's been on a very rapid decline the last few years as they've poached DM journalists and tacked further right.
It's probably even worse for the Telegraph as a lot of those sales will be the subscribers who they are continually heavily discounting in an effort to keep