HuffPost Germany to close at end of March
BurdaForward and HuffPost have announced they will end publication of HuffPost Germany on 31 March. No reason for the closure was given.
« There are no plans to license HuffPost to any other media company in Germany, » a press release from Burda said.
The companies launched HuffPost Germany in October 2013 in a commercial licensing agreement, with BurdaForward operating the newsroom and handling monetisation. The publisher is Cherno Jobatey, while the position of editor-in-chief had recently been vacated, according to German news website Spiegel Online. For the 13 employees who will be affected by the closure, individual solutions will be sought to keep them in the BurdaForward company.
“The German HuffPost showed that you can quickly position a new news offer in the Top 10, and we are very proud of our development in the last five years. We would like to thank the entire team for their dedication and passion,” said Tanja zu Waldeck, Member of the BurdaForward Executive Board and Managing Director of HuffPost Germany.
Commenting on the closure, German media site Horizont said, « The portal had never been able to meet the high journalistic expectations it raised in this country. » It said BurdaForward « supposedly wanted to continue publication, » but Oath, the « financially troubled » parent company of HuffPost, decided to stop investing in the German operation.
Jean-Philippe Behr
