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Jonah Peretti

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Jonah Peretti
Peretti in 2019
Born (1974-01-01) January 1, 1974 (age 50)
Contra Costa County, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (BS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS)
Employer(s)Contagious Media (2001–2006)
The Huffington Post
(2005–2011)
BuzzFeed (2006–present)
Known forBuzzFeed, The Huffington Post
SpouseAndrea Harner
Children2
RelativesChelsea Peretti (sister)
Jordan Peele (brother-in-law)
Websitebuzzfeed.com/jonah

Jonah H. Peretti[1] (born January 1, 1974) is an American internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and CEO of BuzzFeed,[2] a co-founder of The Huffington Post, and a developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog".[3][4][5]

Education and early career

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Peretti was born in California, and raised in Oakland.[6] His father, a criminal defense lawyer and painter, is of Italian and English descent and his mother (née Cherkin), a schoolteacher, is Jewish. His stepmother was African-American.[7][8] He attended The College Preparatory School in Oakland, followed by the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he graduated with a degree in environmental studies in 1996.[4] He taught computer science classes at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, in the mid-1990s.[9] He received a master's degree from the MIT Media Lab in 2001.[10]

While at MIT, his email exchange[11] with Nike over a request to print "sweatshop" on custom order shoes went viral.[12]

After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996, Peretti published an article titled "Capitalism and Schizophrenia"[a] in Negations, a Texas-based journal of critical theory.[14] The paper compares the text Postmodernism and Consumer Society, by Fredric Jameson, with Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (along with discussing works by Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Jean Laplanche) to demonstrate the "psychological link between one-dimensionality and advertising".[15] It explains Peretti's ideas around viral marketing,[13][16] and offers examples of how anti-capitalist critique can be easily integrated into capitalism.[17]

Career

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Peretti co-founded The Huffington Post along with Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart and Arianna Huffington in 2005.[4][18] He left The Huffington Post in 2011 after it was bought by AOL for $315 million.[4][10][19]

In 2005, Peretti hosted the Contagious Media Showdown at Eyebeam in New York City, where he worked as director of the R&D Lab from 2001 to 2006.[citation needed] During the process Peretti developed the concept of the "Bored-at-Work Network", which he supposes to be larger than some major television network audiences.[20]

Peretti founded the "Internet popularity contest" site BuzzFeed in November 2006.[21] After leaving The Huffington Post, Peretti began working at BuzzFeed full-time.[10] While originally known for its mix of internet memes and listicles, the site was the first to break the news that John McCain would endorse Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican primary.[10] The site continued to grow afterward, raising over $35 million in funding from investors the next year.[22] In August 2014, the site raised another $50 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, more than doubling its previous rounds of funding.[23] The site was valued at $850 million by Andreessen Horowitz.[23]

In 2019, Peretti announced that BuzzFeed would be cutting its overall workforce by 15 percent. Peretti said he wanted to reduce costs without resorting to additional fundraising.[24][25] Its remaining workforce then officially unionized, their first successful fight being over laid-off staffers getting their earned paid time off.[26]

In 2021 at a virtual company meeting, Peretti, as BuzzFeed's chief executive, fired 47 employees at HuffPost in a controversial manner, sending a virtual meeting password "spr!ngisH3r3" to laid-off employees. The HuffPost Union, which is affiliated with the Writers Guild of America East, said in a statement that the layoffs had affected 33 of its members, nearly a third of the local union.[27]

In 2022, shareholders urged Peretti to shut down BuzzFeed News; two anonymous sources told CNBC that BuzzFeed News lost about $10 million annually.[28] On April 20, 2023, BuzzFeed under Peretti laid off 15% of its staff and shut down the BuzzFeed News division. In an email to staff on April 20, Peretti stated that the company overinvested in BuzzFeed News "because I love their work and mission so much".[29]

Personal life

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He is the elder brother of comedian, actress and writer Chelsea Peretti.[30] He is married to blogger Andrea Harner, with whom he has twin sons.[30][31][32]

Notes

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  1. ^ Note that this article discusses 'schizophrenia' in the sense used in cultural theory, where it refers to somebody with a weakly defined personal identity.[13]

References

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  1. ^ "Jonah H Peretti, Born 01/01/1974 in California". CaliforniaBirthIndex.org. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
  2. ^ "Mid-length video is either 'stuck in the middle' or the future of TV, depending on whether you ask BuzzFeed's CEO or Meg Whitman". Business Insider. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
  3. ^ New York Times, Building a Brand with a Blog, May 15, 2006
  4. ^ a b c d Mesure, Susie (October 19, 2013). "Jonah Peretti: And at number one on Buzzfeed's list is...". Independent. Archived from the original on June 14, 2022.
  5. ^ "Disruptors: Media". Forbes.
  6. ^ "How BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti Is Building A 100-Year Media Company". Fast Company. Fast Company Magazine.
  7. ^ Chelsea and Jonah Peretti. Interview: Chelsea and Jonah Peretti discuss their controversial Web site, blackpeopleloveus.com (Broadcast transcript). Event occurs at 9:00–10:00 AM).
  8. ^ Contagiousmedia.org Archived April 2, 2004, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ "BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti started with teaching job at Newman School in New Orleans, website reports". NOLA.com. Huffington Post. June 17, 2014.
  10. ^ a b c d Carr, David (February 5, 2012). "Significant and Silly at BuzzFeed". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  11. ^ "Jonah Peretti and Nike". The Guardian. February 19, 2001. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  12. ^ Serwer, Andy (December 5, 2013). "Inside the mind of Jonah Peretti". Fortune Magazine. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
  13. ^ a b Matthews, Dylan (April 2, 2015). "BuzzFeed's founder used to write Marxist theory and it explains BuzzFeed perfectly". Vox. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  14. ^ "Jonah Peretti – Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Negations. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  15. ^ "Negations: Capitalism and Schizophrenia". www.datawranglers.com. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  16. ^ Rice, Andrew (April 5, 2013). "Does Buzzfeed Know the Secret? -- New York Magazine - Nymag". New York Magazine. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  17. ^ "Buzzfeed, Peretti & the Capitalist Critique". The Fourth Floor.
  18. ^ Politics, Buzzfeed (March 1, 2012). "How Andrew Breitbart Helped Launch Huffington Post". Buzzfeed. Retrieved October 14, 2020.
  19. ^ Gustin, Sam (February 7, 2011). "AOL Buys Huffington Post for $315 Million, Arianna to Head AOL Media". Wired. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  20. ^ "Homepage - StayFree Magazine". May 18, 2021.
  21. ^ Beaujon, Andrew (December 3, 2013). "BuzzFeed CEO: Understanding 'how information is shared' can be as valuable as 'traditional reporting talent'". Poynter.
  22. ^ Rice, Andrew (April 7, 2013). "Does BuzzFeed Know the Secret?". New York Magazine. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  23. ^ a b "BuzzFeed raises another $50 million to fund expansion". CNN. August 10, 2014. Retrieved August 29, 2014.
  24. ^ Ruggiero, Christine Wang, Ryan (January 23, 2019). "BuzzFeed to cut overall workforce by 15%: Source". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved January 25, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ^ Lee, Edmund (January 23, 2019). "BuzzFeed Plans Layoffs as It Aims to Turn Profit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
  26. ^ Kludt, Tom; Phung, An (February 12, 2019). "BuzzFeed votes to unionize after layoffs". CNN Business.
  27. ^ Robertson, Katie (March 9, 2021). "BuzzFeed lays off 47 HuffPost workers weeks after acquisition". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 20, 2021.
  28. ^ "BuzzFeed investors have pushed CEO Jonah Peretti to shut down entire newsroom, sources say". CNBC. March 22, 2022.
  29. ^ Peers, Martin; Patel, Sahil; Martineau, Paris (April 20, 2023). "Shuttering of BuzzFeed News Signals Shift to Survival Mode". The Information. Retrieved April 20, 2023.
  30. ^ a b "The Jolly, Abrupt, WTF Rise of BuzzFeed". Style Hatch.
  31. ^ Andrea Harner blog Archived January 9, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; retrieved January 1, 2016.
  32. ^ Bhattacharji, Alex (April 1, 2017). "Peretti Siblings Share a Sense of Humor, Not Just Genes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
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