BuzzFeed News publishes a PDF of documents alleging that Trump has deep ties to Russia. The article notes that “the allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors,” but “BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”

BuzzFeed plans to go public. Peretti also talks about breaking news:

“So the Boston bombings happens, and immediately all of the most popular content on the site is hard news. Then there’s a slow news week, and the most popular content is lists or quizzes or entertainment, or fun content. When there’s huge news breaking, it becomes the biggest thing. But most of the time, it’s not the biggest thing.”

BuzzFeed News is expanding into Germany and Mexico.

BuzzFeed News’s Chris Hamby is a Pulitzer Prize finalist. “We’re so grateful to BuzzFeed for supporting investigative journalism on this scale,” says BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs.

Amid a flurry of news coverage about Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia during the 2016 election, BuzzFeed News partners with the Latvia-based online outlet Meduza to beef up its Russia coverage. BuzzFeed world editor Miriam Elder: “On our side, there’s an enormous interest in Russia we really haven’t seen since the Cold War.”

BuzzFeed gets more than 50% of its traffic from distributed platforms. Here’s Nieman Lab reporting on a presentation by BuzzFeed data infrastructure engineer Walter Menendez:

It uses an internal formula that measures how much traffic every post gets from Facebook, Twitter, and so forth versus from the BuzzFeed homepage, and weights traffic from those other platforms higher than BuzzFeed’s traffic, according to Menendez: “We want to make sure our traffic gets to the farthest reach of people as possible.”

BuzzFeed launches AM to DM, a live news show on Twitter. TechCrunch:

I was far from the only one watching after the show premiered last week. AM to DM was trending on Twitter, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. and No. 4 globally. In fact, BuzzFeed says the show averaged about 1 million unique viewers each day, with clips being viewed a total of 10 million times. And it’s a young audience, with 78 percent of daily live viewers under 35.

BuzzFeed will miss its 2017 revenue target, The Wall Street Journal reports.

BuzzFeed…had been targeting revenue of around $350 million in 2017 but is expected to fall short of that figure by about 15% to 20%, people familiar with the matter said.

(BuzzFeed isn’t the only digital publisher having trouble: Around this same time, Mashable sells low and Vice also misses its revenue target. At the same time, subscription-supported publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic are seeing a Trump bump.)

BuzzFeed announces that it will lay off about 100 business and U.K. staffers.

“The media is in crisis,” Peretti writes in a memo calling for a diversified revenue model. “Google and Facebook are taking the vast majority of revenue, and paying content creators far too little for the value they deliver to users.” The memo also outlines new possibilities for BuzzFeed News: A book club, “paid events,” “content licensing.”

Netflix announces a “short-form Netflix Original Documentary Series” that “will focus on BuzzFeed reporters as they report stories.”

BuzzFeed launches a new weekly news podcast “for news that’s smart, not stuffy.” It includes “Jojo the bot” to help listeners follow along.

BuzzFeed News gets its own domain, BuzzFeedNews.com. Nieman Lab explains one reason the separation might be needed:

Despite BuzzFeed News’ remarkable journalistic success…the general public seems profoundly unable to distinguish it from its sibling quiz factory. When the Pew Research Center polled Americans about what news organizations they trust or don’t trust, BuzzFeed finished dead last, 36th out of 36. It was the only news organization tested that was more distrusted than trusted across the political spectrum — from strong liberals to strong conservatives. The LOLs have proven a big hurdle for the news brand to overcome.

BuzzFeed shuts down its in-house podcast team and says it’s shifting more resources to video.

Peretti calls for more digital publishers to merge: “If BuzzFeed and five of the other biggest companies were combined into a bigger digital media company, you would probably be able to get paid more money.”

BuzzFeed News launches a $5/month membership program. New York Magazine:

Asking for readers to pay for access to a publication is not a bad idea (just ask us, lol), but it’s a somewhat different proposition for a website backed by venture capitalists hoping to turn a profit in a liquidity event like a sale or public offering.

Nieman Lab:

Since branching out as its own, separately branded website this summer, buzzfeednews.com has seen an increase of 30 percent in monthly average unique viewership, BuzzFeed says. That translates to 35 million unique visitors per month and 230 million monthly content views for BuzzFeed News, meaning the total traffic from News posts on the site and videos on Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, YouTube, and Instagram.

Twitter renews AM to DM, which reportedly has a daily audience of 400,000 people, down from a reported 1 million at launch.

BuzzFeed says it will lay off 15% of its workforce, about 250 jobs. The company “basically hit” its 2018 revenue target “of around $300 million,” but Peretti writes in a memo to staff:

“Unfortunately, revenue growth by itself isn’t enough to be successful in the long run. The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again.”

In New York City? Grab BuzzFeed’s first (and last) print newspaper.

Peretti releases a memo about BuzzFeed’s path forward. BuzzFeed News gets a section:

“We are committed to informing the public and holding the powerful accountable. We published the dossier because we believe the public deserved to know about it. We reported that Donald Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about those negotiations. We exposed the WWF’s funding of paramilitary forces that have been abusing and killing people. We helped exonerate 10 men framed by a crooked cop in Chicago.”

BuzzFeed says its international losses quadrupled in 2019.

Ben Smith is leaving BuzzFeed to become the media columnist at The New York Times.

Hoping to avoid more layoffs during the Covid-19 pandemic, BuzzFeed announces company-wide paycuts and Peretti says he won’t draw a salary until the crisis has passed.

BuzzFeed shuts down AM to DM after Twitter stops funding it.

BuzzFeed furloughs 68 staffers and stops covering local news in the U.K. and Australia. From The Guardian:

The company said that the cuts would also hit its flagship US operation as it looks to hit savings goals while continuing to produce “kinetic, powerful journalism.” “We [want to] reach the savings we need and produce the high-tempo, explosive journalism our readers rely on,” the company said.

BuzzFeed maintained that it was still “investing heavily” in its news operation, with a projection of investing $10m more this year than the division makes, and $6m in 2021.

BuzzFeed announces that it will acquire HuffPost from Verizon Media. Peretti: “We want HuffPost to be more HuffPosty, and BuzzFeed to be more BuzzFeedy — there’s not much audience overlap.”

BuzzFeed News wins its first Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into how China’s government detained hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

BuzzFeed announces that it will go public through a SPAC merger. Its valuation is $1.5 billion.

The BuzzFeed News Union goes on strike. The walkout is timed to coincide with a shareholder vote on whether BuzzFeed will go public.

BuzzFeed goes public (BZFD on the Nasdaq). Peretti tells Recode’s Peter Kafka:

“I’m still comfortable [with BuzzFeed News losing money]. To a point. But it’s not the same point it was in the past. And so I think that people have this expectation that, what we’ve done in the past in terms of massive subsidies of news, is something that we will continue to do at that same level. And we can do it to a point. But we have to make sure that we build a sustainable, profitable, growing business so that we can do this journalism for years to come and have this great important impact.”

BuzzFeed’s stock has fallen by about 40% since it started trading on December 6.

Ben Smith is leaving The New York Times to launch a “new global news organization.”

BuzzFeed News’s three top editors — editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs, deputy editor-in-chief Tom Namako, and executive editor Ariel Kaminer — are leaving the company. At this point, BuzzFeed News has around 100 employees and is reportedly losing $10 million a year. CNBC:

Several large shareholders have urged BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti to shut down the entire news operation…One shareholder told CNBC shutting down the newsroom could add up to $300 million of market capitalization to the struggling stock.

“This is not your fault,” Schoofs writes in his resignation email. “You have done everything we asked, producing incandescent journalism that changed the world.” BuzzFeed News will now focus on “the nexus between the internet and IRL,” according to Schoofs, and will offer buyouts to staffers on the investigations, politics, inequality, and science beats.

Peretti in an email to employees, shared with Nieman Lab:

“Investors can’t force me to cut news, and the union can’t force me to subsidize news. I am committed to news in general and [BuzzFeed News] in particular. I’ve made the decision that I want News to be break-even and eventually profitable. We won’t put profits ahead of quality journalism and I’ll never expect [BuzzFeed News] to be as profitable as our entertainment divisions. But we can’t keep losing money…

For many years, News received more support than any other content division and over the years was allowed to spend 9-figures more than it generated in revenue. I still support News and value News, and I don’t want to have to cut back in News when we make new investments in other divisions. That’s why I want to transform News into a sustainable business, while continuing to do impactful, important journalism. I know this is a big shift and will require us to operate differently. We will set News up for success so News can become a stronger financial contributor to the overall BuzzFeed, Inc. business.”

BuzzFeed News shuts down its app.