Business Insider to lay off 8% of staffers: ‘We’re saying goodbye to wonderful colleagues’
NY Post
Embattled news site Business Insider said Thursday it is planning to lay off 8% of its workforce, around 40 journalists — the latest publication to shed staff following massive cuts by Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine.
“We have already begun to refocus teams and invest in areas that drive outsize value for our core audience,” Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng said in a memo distributed to employees.
“Unfortunately, this also means we need to scale back in some areas of our organization.”
The company will offer the laid-off employees a minimum of 13 weeks’ pay and medical coverage through May.
The layoffs come as BI — owned by publishing giant Axel Springer — has been threatened with a lawsuit by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman after it reported that his wife plagiarized academic papers while at MIT.
Ackman cheered the job cuts, calling the publication “a sleazy, unethical, defamer of some of our greatest heros.”
