Comedian-turned-broadcaster Byron Allen is slashing jobs at the Huffington Post less than a few weeks after acquiring its parent company BuzzFeed, according to an internal memo circulated to employees on Friday.
The layoffs will impact more than a dozen workers at the outlet, its editor-in-chief Whitney Snyder wrote in the all-staff note. It wasn’t immediately clear which positions will be impacted.
In addition to the job cuts, Huffington Post Executive Editor Kate Palmer is leaving the publication. Palmer joined the outlet as a national editor in 2012 before rising up the ladder to one of the top positions within the organization.
The memo was first reported by the newsletter Status.
Huffington Post, which now operates as HuffPost, has traded hands a number of times over the past few years. In 2011, publisher Ariana Huffington sold the outlet to AOL for $315 million. AOL was later acquired by Verizon, which spun Huffington Post into a separate company that was purchased by BuzzFeed in 2020.
Allen acquired a majority stake in BuzzFeed earlier this year, and quickly installed himself as the company’s chief executive. In interviews with other publications, Allen said his interest in BuzzFeed is to evolve the brand into a streaming-focused media company, one that could rival YouTube. His streaming service, Local Now, is expected to inherit much of BuzzFeed’s content.
In June, Allen spent $91 million on a large parcel of property in Aspen, which includes a mansion, according to real estate records cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Allen is in the process of selling his broadcast TV stations in order to pay down a significant amount of debt his companies have absorbed through his various media-related acquisitions.
