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BuzzFeed expected to break even after $30 million in cuts this year — www.thewrap.com

For the first time in six years, BuzzFeed is expected to break even after a tumultuous year of layoffs, pay reductions and other cost-cutting measures.

Many of the layoffs were as a result of closing international offices, among them Buzzfeed UK. Press Gazette reports that turnover in the UK fell by almost a third, as the division failed to cut costs against continuing losses and falling revenue.

In the US, it is BuzzFeed's News division which is bearing the brunt of the cuts. The newsroom now has just 100 reporters - roughly half of what they had two years ago.

“For a long time, we ran BuzzFeed News with exuberance but without discipline,” Peretti told the Wall Street Journal. “Now we are operating with both discipline and exuberance. It was a painful process, but we are focused on making it break even or lose just a small amount.”

We might adopt the motto 'discipline with exuberance' ourselves for 2021...

‘Scale with great context’: The Independent eyes global expansion — digiday.com

In complete contrast, UK news title The Independent is eyeing up an international expansion. They marked 'double-digit' revenue growth this year and posted a profit, despite the pandemic. It plans to grow headcount by up to 25%, and is eyeing up India as a key market.

Woolworths High Street 'relaunch' proves a hoax — www.bbc.co.uk

Yesterday was an embarrassing day for many media outlets. A now-deleted account tweeted that UK high street retailer Woolworths - much beloved for its extensive pick 'n' mix - would be relaunching. Far too many news outlets jumped on the story without so much as a call to brand owners Very to verify the truth, then either deleted articles or added one-line corrections at the end of pieces to ensure they still got traffic once it emerged the tweets were a hoax. Quite how we're supposed to cultivate trust in news when journalists behave like this is beyond me.

The Sacramento Bee wants to tie metrics to pay. Its guild is not having it. — www.poynter.org

Even if you're not especially interested in The Sacramento Bee story itself, this piece from Poynter sets out some good points about what metrics should matter when looking at value, and how to support journalists' understanding of what their communities need if setting goals.

This week's podcast:

AgriBriefing CEO Rory Brown on growing niche media — voices.media

This week Rory Brown, co-founder and CEO of AgriBriefing, speaks about building a niche B2B business, the issues with finance in media, Agribriefing’s acquisition strategy, and keeping an entrepreneurial spirit alive as a larger company.

Lessons from award-winning publisher podcasts: Bestseller’s Casimir Stone — voices.media

The winner of the 2020 Publisher Podcast Awards Branded category was the Bestseller podcast from Reedsy. Podcast host Casimir Stone says editing takes time, but crafting a podcast episode around a narrative allows you to deliver a different kind of value than a straight interview.