BuzzFeed divides news and entertainment departments

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed‘s chief executive, Jonah Peretti, sent a letter to employees that read, in part:

We are making a big change at BuzzFeed that will simplify our organizational structure, allow us to operate more entrepreneurially, and help us better serve the hundreds of millions of people who enjoy BuzzFeed each month.

In this new structure, video won’t be the job of just one department. Having a single “video department” in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a “mobile department”. Instead, it will be something we expand and embed across the organization. As digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video, just like everything we do works on mobile and social platforms. Instead of organizing around a format or technology, we will organize our work to take full advantage of many formats and technologies.

The new structure involves splitting the publication into two departments: BuzzFeed News and BuzzFeed Entertainment.

BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, will run BuzzFeed News, which will “encompass the work that is rooted in reporting and journalistic independence — on topics both serious and fun — and focused in the long term on building the trust of [BuzzFeed‘s] audience.”