Business Insider Laying Off 8% of Staff

Business Insider said on Thursday that it was laying off 8 percent of its staff, the latest in a wave of sharp job cuts in the media industry this month.

Barbara Peng, Business Insider’s chief executive, said in an internal note that the job cuts were part of a plan, announced late last year, to shift focus solely to news coverage of business, tech and innovation.

“We have already begun to refocus teams and invest in areas that drive outsize value for our core audience,” Ms. Peng wrote. “Unfortunately, this also means we need to scale back in some areas of our organization.”

Ms. Peng added: “We’re committed to building an enduring and sustainable Business Insider for the coming years and beyond.”

In November, the company changed its name from Insider back to Business Insider, and its co-founder, Henry Blodget, stepped aside as chief executive. At the time, the publication’s top editor, Nicholas Carlson, wrote that it was a “new era” for the company: “It’s now about recommitting to what we do best.”

A Business Insider spokeswoman on Thursday declined to comment on the specifics of the layoffs.

Business Insider previously laid off 10 percent of its staff in April 2023, citing economic pressures. At the time, Business Insider had about 950 workers around the world.

Business Insider is owned by the German publishing giant Axel Springer, which also owns Politico. It recently became embroiled in a dispute with the billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman after it published an article saying that his wife, Neri Oxman, a prominent academic and architect, had plagiarized in her dissertation. After an internal review, Business Insider defended the article. “The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing,” Ms. Peng said this month.

The American media industry is reeling from cutbacks in recent weeks: The Los Angeles Times laid off more than 20 percent of its newsroom; Sports Illustrated gutted it staff; Time magazine cut roles; The Washington Post announced 240 workers had accepted buyout offers. On Thursday, unionized workers at both The New York Daily News and Forbes walked off the job.