I was interviewed on by one of their writers years ago and they just pushed for me to say things that would fit their narrative, but I only told them what was true - not what they wanted to hear. They didn't seem to like that and they only used like one sentence from all the questions they asked me. It was like they were purposely trying to paint someone as a worse person and they were trying to link me to fake news. I said we don't do fake news, we do opinions and commentary on the news. We won't ever do fake news and we never did fake news. We talk trash about politics and we have opinions that not everyone can handle. That's not fake, that's as real as it gets. We won't say what you WANT to hear, we say what we want to say. If you or them don't like it, then piss off. Go read another website, we don't give a shit.
So to that, I say fuck BuzzFeed News and I am glad they are shutting down.
Meanwhile, here's the actual details and reason why they're shutting down thanks to a report on NBC News:
In an email to staff shared with NBC News, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said the move was part of a 15% workforce reduction across a number of teams.
"While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization," he wrote.
Peretti said he had "overinvest[ed] in BuzzFeed News "because I love their work and mission so much."
"This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media," he wrote.
He added that he had failed to "hold the company to higher standards for profitability" to give it a buffer for downturns.