HuffPost’s top editor resigned after the left-leaning news site was hit by mass layoffs — as fury grows that the parent company was “bowing to MAGA” ahead of Donald Trump taking office this month.
Editor-in-chief Danielle Belton said she was leaving the company late Thursday — two days after the BuzzFeed-owned site announced it was slashing 30 jobs, or 22% of HuffPost’s newsroom.
“I could not, in good faith, ask others to make this difficult decision without doing the same,” Belton wrote in a memo to staffers.
“At my core, I am a very sensitive and emotional person, which is why I haven’t been as communicative in the last few days.”
Executive editors Kate Palmer and Whitney Snyder will take over in the newsroom, Belton added, while the company figures out its “next steps” with the editor-in-chief role.
The layoffs followed a report this summer that former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who owns a minority stake in HuffPost’s parent, had been pushing for cuts at the company.
News of Belton’s exit and the broader cuts related to business challenges sparked anger at BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.
“It’s a tough business and I’m not naive about cuts – but is he also another exec bowing to MAGA?” HuffPost national editor George Zornick posted on X on Thursday. “Again, I know that layoffs happen. Believe me I know. But the shocking scale of this week’s announced layoffs do not match the financial information we have about HuffPost. We’ve been given scant, if any, explanation.”
Alexander Kaufman, a senior reporter at HuffPost, shared Zornick’s post on X and added: “In the coming weeks, HuffPost is going to ax upward of one-quarter of our newsroom. Under @gzornick’s leadership, my team won awards, broke major stories and beat our monthly traffic goals by threefold. How does dismantling us serve long-term business or journalistic goals?”
Zornick also shared an excerpt from Peretti’s recent interview with Semafor following his meeting with Ramaswamy, who bought 9% of BuzzFeed last summer.
He quoted the interview, which explores the role Ramaswamy, who was recently tapped by Trump to lead a newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk, may play in the left-leaning site.
Ramaswamy “doesn’t have control” of BuzzFeed and expects “to find a way toward a successful exit of his BuzzFeed investment,” the interview said.
Semafor also mused, “Perhaps there’s a path to successful activism and a bit of political satisfaction on the side. Ramaswamy is also pushing cost cuts.”