Yahoo's plan to build a tech news site has reportedly failed

Yahoo appears to be killing its plan to build a mainstream tech news site, as Politico's Peter Sterne reported Wednesday that it's shuttering nearly half of its content verticals, including the tech and food sites.

As part of the move, Dan Tynan, Yahoo Tech's editor in chief, will leave the company. In a farewell memo obtained by Politico, Tynan wrote that internal problems may have played into today's decision.

"Despite an enormous set of challenges (most of them internal) they still managed to produce some of the smartest, funniest, most original tech coverage on the Web. I could not be more proud," he wrote.

David Pogue, the former New York Times tech columnist who joined Yahoo Tech in 2013, will move to Yahoo's news vertical, the report added. Autos, health, and music verticals are closing as well, it said.

Business Insider has reached out to Yahoo for comment.

It was a big deal in 2013 when Yahoo revealed its plan for a new tech news site. It hired a number of star writers, including Pogue, who built a brand name for himself during his 13 years at the New York Times. In a pitch deck shared in 2014, Pogue indicated Yahoo Tech's design and content geared towards the general audience would be its strong point.

Today's reorg comes amid a larger layoff plan Yahoo announced earlier this month. It plans to cut 15% of its workforce and close a number of its overseas offices by the end of this year. Just yesterday, it announced it would pull the plug on Yahoo Labs, its in-house research lab. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that a new round of job cuts would begin Wednesday.

Yahoo is also shuttering Yahoo Travel and laying off four to five staffers including editor in chief Laura Begley Bloom, according to a Wednesday report from Skift's Jason Clampet.

You can read the full Politico report here>>