AOL cuts 900 jobs following Huffington Post deal
AOL is to axe about 20% of its workforce following the $315m (£199m) acquisition of the news website Huffington Post last month.
The 900 redundancies will mostly affect AOL editorial staff now seen as unnecessary as it combines Huffington Post operations with its own media services.
The sweeping job cuts will see long-standing editorial employees, including the editor-in-chief of PoliticsDaily Melinda Henneberger and AOL’s senior vice president of news Jonathan Dube, leaving the company.
AOL is to cut about 400 jobs with a further 300 outsourced to third party companies. It will also cut 200 jobs in the US.
AOL has made more than 2,000 redundancies since November as it struggles to compete with rival online giants such as Facebook and Google.
In a memo to employees yesterday AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong says: “AOL employees deserve a tremendous amount of credit because I don’t think it’s easy to go from managing decline to managing growth.
“Our strategy remains clear: create high-quality content experiences for consumers, at scale.”
He adds that the change in organisational structure will “significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth.”
AOL’s network of editorial and video sites are to be integrated with Huffington Post content, reaching an estimated combined audience of 270 million. It is hoped the expansion of the AOL business will boost diminishing ad revenues.
Currently AOL has just 5.3% of the US display advertising market share, according to eMarketer.
