Condé Nast’s famously Byzantine digital strategy may be getting a little bit easier to understand: The company’s Web operations, which had been splintered into two groups, are getting melded into one, which will be run by Condé digital exec Sarah Chubb.
Yet another sign Google is getting serious about cost-cutting: It is dropping its efforts to sell print advertising in newspapers. In a blog post published this afternoon, the company says it will drop its Print Ads product at the end of February.
Media layoff stories are, depressingly, old hat by now. Less common: Tales of media companies asking their surviving employees to take pay cuts.
But that’s what New York Magazine is doing with its core writing staff.
I keep hearing that 2009 ad plans are in stasis until the end of the holiday shopping season, making any prognostication about next year even more of a guess than usual. But the analysts at Barclays figure they’ve got enough data to revise earlier projections they made this fall. You won’t be surprised to hear they’ve become more negative.
Just like every other set of media layoffs/cutbacks, these aren’t surprising, which doesn’t make them any less unpleasant: Newsweek will be making its second round of cuts in less than a year. It’s hard to see how the Washington Post Co., the magazine’s owner, could do anything else. Newsweek loses money, and ad revenue at the magazine has been in free-fall throughout the year.
In late 2008, this is what passes for good news: The lengthy layoffs at Time Warner’s publishing unit are just about over, says Executive Vice President John Squires in a conversation MediaMemo had with him. Before anyone drowns in holiday cheer, a Time Inc. executive I double-checked with stressed that Squires had qualified his statement a couple different ways. Noted. But in late 2008, this qualifies as good news.
Time Inc. employees know that layoffs are coming, and this morning they were told that the layoffs will cost parent company Time Warner a bundle. Still unknown: who’s actually getting fired. That will change beginning next week, says Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges. She says the company will unveil the “size, staffing and structure of each of the business units” beginning “early next week.”
Once upon a time, U.S. News & World Report tried positioning itself as a competitor to Newsweek and Time. But those days are long gone: Now the publication is best known as a publisher of lists. And it’s acknowledging that fact by moving to a monthly publishing schedule.
Time Inc. still hasn’t informed its staff about who is staying and who is going in the upcoming mass firings at Time Warner’s magazine unit. But it has released a bit more detail to Wall Street: The sackings will cost it somewhere between $100 million and $125 million in restructuring charges this quarter.
Time Inc. still hasn’t figured out exactly how many people the magazine publisher will fire this fall — the 600 number reported earlier this week, we’re told, is a guesstimate. In the meantime there are plenty of high-level org chart changes, like the departure of Ned Desmond, a longtime Time Inc. vet who was most recent title was President of Time Inc. Interactive. Click through to read Time Inc. boss Ann Moore’s goodbye memo.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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