It’s the algorithm’s world and we’re just living in it.

Just ask these former journalists at Business Insider who were laid off this week.

Could Jamie have known that some of her staff at the time would be in this very predicament just a few weeks later?

This week, Business Insider laid off a full 21% of its staff of about 800, pointing to AI and SEO as the drivers, those twin forces changing traffic and revenue trends. And, the company said, it wants to “build something new.” (Like… potted plants? Journalism is still journalism, the core product is still the core product. What’s changed is how people find it.)

CEO Barbara Peng wrote in a memo to staff:

We're at the start of a major shift in how people find and consume information, which is driving ongoing volatility in traffic and distribution for all publishers. The impact on our industry has been profound, with many publications shuttering in recent years.

A note about Barbara Peng before we get to the AI and the journalists.

Peng is the “newish” CEO of Business Insider, as Oliver Darcy at Status put it. She became CEO in 2023, and was president before that since 2021.

But Peng’s roots come from the other part of the Insider business: media and tech industry research. For background, in 2016, a year after it acquired the journalism site Business Insider, the German media company Axel Springer acquired the research firm eMarketer and rolled it under the Insider brand, creating Business Insider Intelligence and installing Peng to run it. Before that, she was at research and advisory firm 451 Research, and was an analyst before that.

Barbara Peng, CEO, Business Insider

As we all know, it matters who is at the top, helming the ship that is journalism and its vaunted mission. We’ve seen what happens when owners kowtow (Washington Post) or go wobbly (Paramount/CBS). And when you have someone who has staked their career on one business that is not journalism, it’s not always clear that they will “get” the journalism business enough to put the right structures behind it, including the ones that make money.

This is just context, not destiny. Business Insider may still have a very bright future ahead. Jamie Heller is an excellent editor and we should give this new vision a chance. Things are changing, and everyone needs to consider new strategies.

For now, the Business Insider Union is unconvinced, noting in a statement, “It is unacceptable that union members and other talented coworkers are again paying the price for the strategic failures of Business Insider's leadership.”

AI and SEO and all the tech to come

The roots of the problem run deep. Business Insider has long relied on SEO to drive traffic and revenue — like so many publications. This approach to building audiences has brought nothing but misery – junking up the internet, shrinking salaries, and obscuring the value of quality journalism. In 2009, when the bottom dropped out of the ad market and companies eagerly turned toward SEO-driven “content,” per-word rates dropped overnight from up to $4/word to $500 for a single story, and sometimes less.

Tying their lot to SEO has been problematic. Business Insider has been so reliant on traffic from search that when they stripped their pages of SEO tags in 2014, traffic dropped 80%.

To her credit perhaps, Peng says the plan is to move away from such “traffic-sensitive businesses.” But with the growing ubiquity of LLMs, is there really any chance of outpacing it? Or could it be better to fall back and focus on doing great journalism. (That the algorithm finds juicy.)

Strangely missing from Peng’s announcement is a reminder that Business Insider recently appointed executive editor Julia Hood to be “newsroom AI lead.” This seems to be mostly about tools, but for a company leaning into AI, this sounds like an investment worthy of flagging to editorial folks. Unless it’s just air.

The journalists you should hire next

What this means is yet another batch of talented folks who will have a number of paths open to them, as this newsletter has highlighted. If you’re looking for talent, start here:

Amanda Perelli – Covered the creator economy, keeping tabs on Instagram, YouTube – and even OnlyFans, which led her to an award for strong work on a secretive management firm for the porn site.

Rob Price – Super talented reporter who has covered tech, broken stories, picked up awards, and sat on the board of directors at the San Francisco Press Club. As he’s noted, he’s spent almost one-third of his life at Business Insider! Up next for him: Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia that had already been lined up.

Adam Rogers – Has covered tech for-ever, before BI was at Wired for 18 years, at Newsweek for 9 years before that.

Sophia Acevedo – Personal finance reporter who dug into not just tips on saving, but intimate stories of the people she interviewed about their financial lives.

Matt Drange – A great tech reporter who has done stints at The Information, Forbes, and Protocol.

Vishal Persaud – A scoopy reporter who joined BI from Pitchbook News, Bloomberg, New York Daily News and others. Just a week ago, he helped break the news that Meta has been encouraging managers to rate employees “below expectations” — a move that helps save on incentive pay. He claims he’ll take time off, but when you’re used to breaking stories… it’s kind of hard to sit on the sidelines, so we’ll see.

And Jeff Cane! I worked with Jeff at Condé Nast Portfolio in the late-aughts. He is the best colleague ever – so smart, dedicated, polished and professional. Knows. His. Stuff. Do whatever you can to get this man on your team!

For more on these folks, Talking Biz News has some nice tributes.