BuzzFeed reducing UK HuffPost news staff

BuzzFeed is reducing its HuffPost staff in the United Kingdom, a BuzzFeed spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

The reductions come after layoffs at HuffPost in the United States were announced this week.

“BuzzFeed has announced today that it’s begun a restructuring of HuffPost in order to break even this year and fast-track its path to profitability,” a spokeswoman for BuzzFeed said in an emailed statement.

Staff were notified Tuesday about the plans, the spokeswoman said in an interview, and are currently talking with the company about other potential jobs at the company. The number of eliminated jobs will be under 20, she added, but it will not have a final number until the end of next week.

The layoffs are needed, the statement said, because the company is reducing its coverage in the U.K.

“As part of these changes, we have begun a consultation process in the UK to propose focusing on local coverage of politics, entertainment and LIFE (HuffPost’s lifestyle vertical) with a smaller team, while exploring new commercial partnerships in the market,” it stated.

The news follows word on Tuesday that 47 U.S. HuffPost employees would be laid off and HuffPost’s Canadian newsroom closed. The staff changes come only three weeks after BuzzFeed finalized the acquisition of HuffPost from Verizon Media on Feb. 16.

BuzzFeed in May announced that dozens of employees would be furloughed. Not long afterward, 67 percent of those furloughed staffers discovered they would lose their jobs permanently, The Wrap reported in July.

HuffPost was launched in 2005 by BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, Arianna Huffington, Andrew Breitbart and Kenneth Lerer. Peretti would go on to found BuzzFeed the following year.