layoffs

Hundreds More Time Inc. Layoffs Coming Today?

Hamilton Nolan · 11/19/08 10:12AM

Although it seems like Time Inc. has laid off upwards of 37,000 staffers in the last few weeks, the fact is that that company is still marching slowly towards its goal of 600 newly unemployed people. Today could be the worst day yet; Keith Kelly predicts as many as 250 Time Inc. layoffs by the end of the day. Cottage Living folded late yesterday, and other titles in the company's lifestyle group could be up for cuts today. Please send any layoff details and memos to us just before you walk out the door with the office stapler, never to return. [NYP]

Layoffs at Lucky

Sheila · 11/18/08 04:17PM

Lucky, Conde Nast's magazine about, um, shopping, has laid off three editors. [Portfolio]

More Media Cuts

cityfile · 11/18/08 03:45PM

A fresh batch of media layoffs were reported today, including cuts at Condé Nast's Lucky, Time Inc.'s Cottage Living, and Forbes. New York's Daily Intel has a rundown of the carnage. [NYM]

Finally, Good Layoffs

Pareene · 11/18/08 02:31PM

Focus on the Family, the official religious arm of all that is wrong and bad in America, is laying off 149 hateful scumbags. That's 21% of their workforce! They'll all be forced to roam the streets of Colorado Springs, hopefully resorting to cannibalism or possibly having the gay sex they've always secretly longed for in exchange for the drugs they're all addicted to. Also four of the group's eight magazines will now appear only on-line. Eight magazines! Jesus! Apparently donations to Dr. James Dobson's International House of Cartoonish Intolerance are way down, on account of the Christian right being demoralized by our Muslim Terrorist President-elect. So, hey, let's all celebrate! A round of abortions on us! [UPI]

Galleries Slim Down

cityfile · 11/18/08 08:04AM

The downturn in the economy—not to mention last week's pretty disastrous auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's—appear to be taking a toll at art galleries around town. Pace Wildenstein has slashed 12 percent of its staff in recent days. [AFC]

Six Apart founders return from Disneyland, mouse ears held high

Owen Thomas · 11/17/08 11:00PM

All right, all right: Perhaps it was a tad bit mean-spirited to begrudge young parents their first vacation to Disneyland with a child. Six Apart president Mena Trott, who spent the weekend in the happiest place on earth with husband and CTO Ben Trott, is hilariously unapologetic about taking a vacation right after laying off 16 staff members at the blog-software company they cofounded. Beating Valleywag to the punch, she's written the worst captions she could invent on pictures of her highly adorable daughter and way hot husband at the theme park. Not that this will be any comfort to the people she laid off, who will only remember how Trott followed up the cuts by announcing that she was going to Disneyland in the manner of an NFL player who just spiked a football in the end zone.

MTV Layoff Rumormonger

Hamilton Nolan · 11/17/08 02:29PM

Rumors have been floating around for the last month that Viacom is planning a big round of layoffs. The latest: we hear that MTV is planning one round of cuts for early December, and another in January. Both would technically miss the holiday, making them appear slightly less Scrooge-like. If you have any details (or denials), email us.

Firing fad spreads outside the Valley

Paul Boutin · 11/17/08 01:20PM

Hatteras Networks, as the name suggests, is in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company bragged to the Wall Street Journal that they've laid off 20 of 80 employees, weeks after Denton and Calacanis beat them to it. Tough times, totally awesome decisions! I only hope you recognize this one-company trend story for what it really is: An ad. The message is at the end: "Revenue has grown more than 100% every year for the last three years." Now they're sure to get a decent acquisition offer. All they had to do was fire the 20 most problematic employees.

Bloomberg Will Have to Sacrifice Some of His Own

cityfile · 11/17/08 12:08PM

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to slash the city's budget will require cuts at all local agencies. It also means he's going to have to cut 23 people from his own staff if he expects to comply with his own order on "maximum allowable headcounts." If you work at City Hall and the mayor asks you to step out of the bullpen and into his glass conference room, well, don't say we didn't warn you! [NYP]

Obama on 60 Minutes, Dan Rather's Suit Gains Steam

cityfile · 11/17/08 10:57AM

♦ Barack Obama's first post-election interview with 60 Minutes (an excerpt is on your left) earned the show its biggest audience in nine years. [THR]
Dan Rather has spent $2 million battling CBS thus far, but it looks like his time and money may finally be paying off. [NYT]
♦ MTV's TRL came to an end yesterday, in case you haven't heard the terribly tragic news. [NYT]
Rupert Murdoch's New York Post appears to have warmed to Barack Obama. "So has Mr. Murdoch gone soft on liberals—or perhaps just reacted pragmatically to Mr. Obama's sizable victory?" [NYT]
♦ The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. The flick generated $70.4 in its first three days. [Reuters]

No Bonuses at Goldman, More Layoffs

cityfile · 11/17/08 06:30AM

♦ Goldman Sachs' seven most senior execs have decided to forgo their 2008 bonuses. The move was simply "the right thing to do," said a Goldman spokesman. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ JP Morgan may cut up to 3,000 people, or 10 percent of its global workforce, in the coming months. [Telegraph]
♦ Citigroup's CEO, Vikram Pandit, says the bank plans to eliminate another 50,000 jobs, and cut expenses by as much as 20 percent. [Bloomberg]
♦ UBS reportedly plans to lay off 30 percent of its investment banking division. [Dealbreaker]
♦ Japan has announced that it is officially in a recession. [Bloomberg]
♦ As for the U.S., 96 percent of the economists surveyed in a recent poll believe the economy is in a recession, and nearly three-fourths think it could persist beyond the first quarter of next year. [CNNMoney]

Terrible Jobs For Ex-Magaziners

Ryan Tate · 11/16/08 09:17PM

Ad Age ran the numbers and found magazines eliminated 3,200 jobs between June and the end of September. And that was before the Great Magazine Die-Off! Here's what to do before your severance checks run out, former magazine people: Don't put off looking for a job; call up those contacts you thoughtfully cultivated before you were laid off and be an insane, annoying optimist. Do so and you just might be among the lucky few to snag one of the jobs on the following list, which depressingly represents the sum total of what Ad Age found to be still available, sometimes:

Layoffs? They're going to Disneyland!

Owen Thomas · 11/15/08 04:00AM

Six Apart, the San Francisco blog-software company which helped spark the blogging boom, just laid off 16 of its 200 employees. And its top executives took a 15 percent paycut. Such noble sacrifice! Except that those cutbacks have not crimped the holiday plans of cofounders Ben and Mena Trott. She surprised her husband with an irony-free trip to Disneyland. That they can so blithely afford the trip reminds me of persistent rumors that the couple cashed out some of their shares in the privately held company when it took an earlier round of venture capital. (Photo by Jackson West)

Rearden Commerce cuts 50 people

Alaska Miller · 11/14/08 06:20PM

A tipster sent in word that Rearden — an e-commerce startup from Foster City — is rumored to have cut 72 people. We hear the actual number is closer to 50 out of 375. The company provides a "personal assistant portal" that streamlines travel planning, reservations, and general logistics within corporations. Or something. Our tipster's contention is that no one, especially customers, is quite sure just what exactly the company does. Rearden raised $100 million in funding back in April of this year and claims to have signed off service contracts with 1,700 companies. Let us know if there's anything more.

The Weariness Of Layoffs

Hamilton Nolan · 11/14/08 04:34PM

In the last two days, we told you about layoffs at Forbes.com, Essence, Entertainment Weekly, and National Geographic, with a bonus false alert at Nylon thrown in for good measure. And the sad fact is that these are just the ones we could get around to doing. All these media layoffs are like a band-aid being pulled off verrrrryyyy slowly, and—unfortunately for the laid-off—each progressive wave of cuts makes us want to tune out the pain even more. This is the saddest thing of all. When good people get laid off they deserve to elicit some shock; they deserve to be remembered, and talked about, and reminisced upon. They deserve for the people who cover their demise to go into detail about who they were, and what they've done in their careers, and the big stories they broke, and how they changed things, and who they knew, and where they might go from here. They deserve commenters to bemoan their departure and joke about their good lines and reassure them that they'll be missed. But we have to face reality here: it ain't gonna happen. The media now is like a city with a high murder rate, where people get shot dead with such mind-numbing regularity that it gets harder and harder to summon the appropriate amount of outrage for their doom. We all still imagine that when our time comes, there will be a collective pause amongst our peers, and everyone will silently cross themselves and wonder how it could happen to such a talented person. But realistically, we'll be just another number. The best you can do now is say your little blanket agnostic prayer at night for all these assorted victims, then keep your head down and hope that you can ride out the downturn until good days come back again. On that note, here's some more layoff news we didn't get to today:

More Media Cuts

cityfile · 11/14/08 02:40PM

More layoffs today in the wonderful world of media: In addition to cuts at EW and Essence, 8-10 people were let go yesterday from InStyle. Blackbook canned its creative director. Jim Cramer's NYC-based finance site, TheStreet.com, closed its offices in San Francisco. Bauer Publishing laid off five editorial people from Life & Style. Forbes dismissed staffers assigned to ForbesAutos.com, scaled back ForbesTraveler.com, and closed its conference business. But despite rumors to the contrary, Nylon says it is not closing down, so it isn't all bad news today.