Business Insider Layoffs: Why AI and Less Traffic are Changing News

So, it looks like Business Insider is laying off quite a few people, about 21% of their staff, which is pretty huge. This is happening because, well, check it out, less people are hitting up their website. It seems like folks are leaning on stuff like ChatGPT to get their news summaries these days, which is totally eating into website traffic for news sites.

You know, Business Insider isn't the only one going through this. Lots of digital media companies are shaking things up right now. It's like, people are just using AI more and more to get quick news updates, and that means less clicks for these websites.

The CEO, Barbara Peng, sent out a memo explaining things. She mentioned that even though they're making more money for each person who visits their site compared to two years ago, a big chunk of their business, like 70% of it, is still kinda dependent on how much traffic they get. She said they gotta shrink the company so they can handle those crazy drops in traffic that they can't control. Makes sense, I guess, but still rough.

They're also really getting into AI. A ton of their employees are already using something called Enterprise ChatGPT, and they're rolling out other AI tools to try and make things better for everyone, both inside the company and for readers. And they're changing what they focus on content-wise, trying to stick to stuff that people really get into. They're also getting rid of most of their e-commerce business.

But hey, there's something new too! They're starting this events thing called BI Live. Barbara said they've already seen some interest and they're gonna keep building that team. So, not all bad news, I guess?

Just for some context, it's not just Business Insider. Earlier this year, the Washington Post and the Associated Press also cut some staff. It seems like everyone in the news world is trying to figure out how to deal with things changing and maybe save some money and update how they do stuff.