Post-mortem. BuzzFeed News closed in April 2023. The account below was written after the end, with the outcome known. Separately, a blind test with the evidence cut off at October 2021, before the end, returned: not called safe. How the blind test works.

BuzzFeed News

Defunct digital newsroom: BuzzFeed's ad-funded news division, shut down May 2023

Blind testEvidence cut off October 2021 · Ended April 2023 · Result: not called safe

What happened

Parent company announced shutdown of the news division as part of company-wide layoffs (April 2023)

Why it did not hold

BuzzFeed News stopped publishing in 2023 and was absorbed into HuffPost, leaving no active newsroom to threaten or defend.

BuzzFeed News was a news website owned by BuzzFeed Inc. that lost millions of dollars each year and closed in May 2023. It had no paying subscribers to rely on, made money only from ads shown next to its stories, and depended entirely on social media and search engines to send readers its way. Competitors like the New York Times and Washington Post built loyal paying audiences that protected their business, while BuzzFeed News faced two threats at once: bigger news outlets offering better reporting, and AI chatbots that answer questions directly by copying content from news sites without sending readers to them. The only thing that could change this picture is if the parent company BuzzFeed Inc. finds a way to become profitable again under new ownership, but so far that has not happened.

AI pressure: AI answer engines (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT) scraping and replacing referral traffic. AI answer tools already cut referral traffic industry-wide, hollowing out the ad model that funded this newsroom before it closed.

Bigger players: The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN. Subscription-funded rivals kept readers and ad dollars while BuzzFeed News, wholly ad-dependent, folded into HuffPost in 2023.

What protected it. None: it was a wholly-owned, ad-funded division with no subscriber base, and it was shut down once losses hit about $10M a year.

Timeline

2026-07-27Parent BuzzFeed Inc cuts 33 to 35 percent of workforce under new owner Byron Allen
2026-05-27Byron Allen's family office completes $120 million, roughly 51 percent stake acquisition of BuzzFeed Inc
2026-03-12BuzzFeed Inc discloses going concern doubt after $57.3 million 2025 net loss
2024BuzzFeed Inc market value falls to roughly $37 million
2023-05-05BuzzFeed News ceases publishing new content
2023-04-20BuzzFeed Inc announces BuzzFeed News shutdown amid 15 percent, ~180 job layoff
2023-01BuzzFeed announces AI pivot using ChatGPT for quiz content
2022-03Roughly half of BuzzFeed News's 100 reporters offered buyouts
2021-12BuzzFeed Inc goes public via SPAC merger at about $1.5 billion valuation
2019-01BuzzFeed News cuts 15 percent of staff, ends national desk

Also gone

Chegg closed 2026 Course Hero closed 2026 One Hour Translation / Blend was absorbed 2026

All 62 post-mortems →

This page is a post-mortem, not a live assessment, and it carries no band. The blind-test result is the only part made without knowledge of the outcome.