As laid off BuzzFeed employees mourn their jobs with fresh tears, the company is rebranding itself with new hires: Cheaper humans they will call “editorial fellows.” BuzzFeed will pay them hourly wages. They will not give them health benefits.
The new hires will work in New York and Los Angeles.
“BuzzFeed is currently hiring year-long editorial and video fellows,” the site’s Entertainment Editor Krystie Lee Yandoli callously announced on Twitter late Monday afternoon. “In the past, fellowship programs were 3-4 months & paid hourly wages with no benefits. Applications are due today while layoffs are happening across the company affecting full-time employees in those same depts.”
On Friday, BuzzFeed fired 43 members of its editorial staff that included well-known reporter John Stanton, who was formerly Washington Bureau Chief for the publication. On Monday, more layoffs were underway. Before the bloodbath is done, the company plans to eliminate 15 percent of all jobs.
Twitter has been swarming with sad goodbye notes and others publicly pushing for their hires elsewhere. On Monday, BuzzFeed‘s own community shot back at the site with a pretty obnoxious but much deserved quiz. (RELATED: Hundreds Of BuzzFeed Staffers Are Demanding Checks)
BuzzFeed, meanwhile, is taking the sting out of all that loss — what kind of monsters are these people? — by bringing in less costly, less experienced new hires.
If you’re an ex-BuzzFeed employee, cover your eyes.
These new employees will have the following qualities:
- High emotional intelligence
- A positive, curious, playful disposition (no haters)
- A competitive drive — you enjoy winning and really going for it
- A genuine wide-eyed love of pop culture and lifetstyle trends in all its forms
- An interest in social platforms and what drives people to share content on the web
- Curiosity and excitement about social platforms
- 1-3 years of experience
- Ability to handle feedback and improve from it
A reader ironically named Hope Rehak had a clear reaction to the news: WTF?
“SPEAKING AS A READER, it definitely destroys my confidence in these media outlets when they lay off anyone who has achieved as much as these BuzzFeed writers have in their time with your outlet. Are they really going to just replace them all with exploited gen z postgrads now or…”
She didn’t even finish her thought.
The post says the deadline to apply for this amazing opportunity is Jan. 28.
Good luck, guys. That’s TODAY.