Britain’s The Independent in talks to take control of BuzzFeed UK

LONDON (Reuters): British media group The Independent is in talks to take control of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post’s operations in the UK and Ireland in a multi-year deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Independent will take control of both the editorial and commercial operations of BuzzFeed and its various brands, including HuffPost, Tasty and Seasoned, in Britain under a licensing deal, the source said on Thursday.

BuzzFeed’s staff in Britain will shift to The Independent, the source said. The Independent did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The deal talks come at a time when major media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and the Business Insider, have cut jobs as they grapple with declining advertising revenue in an uncertain economic environment.

BuzzFeed, which shuttered its news unit in April last year, was founded by Jonah Peretti and John Johnson in 2006 and went public through a blank-check merger in 2021.

The news division of BuzzFeed was once viewed as a serious challenger to legacy media companies and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for the coverage of China’s mass detention of Muslims, but it failed to find a working business model and was a consistent money loser.

The potential deal between The Independent and BuzzFeed UK was first reported by the Financial Times. Shares of BuzzFeed jumped about 40% to 29 cents on Thursday. They have lost about 98% of their value since their debut.