Lily Lin, BitTorrent's PR rep, wants to know who Valleywag's source is about the company's layoffs yesterday. Lily, you have this all wrong. You tell us things you're not supposed to. The company's statement, the parsing of which we welcome in the comments:
BitTorrent Inc., the file-sharing startup whose underlying technology is responsible for much of the piracy that plagues Hollywood, is laying off its sales and marketing department. The immediate cause of the layoffs: A failure to sell the Torrent Entertainment Network, BitTorrent's attempt at an online media store, to Best Buy for a rumored $15 million. That deal fell apart, a BitTorrent insider believes, because of a recent FCC ruling on file sharing. CEO Doug Walker, who replaced troubled founder Bram Cohen last fall, had hinted at a rethink of the store in March. Walker's also said to be rethinking BitTorrent's "DNA" service, which sought to offer businesses a cut-rate online content-deliver service, using file-sharing technology to undercut Limelight and Akamai's prices. BitTorrent is now thinking about making the service free, which would certainly count as "cut-rate" — but also suggests that it hadn't had much success selling it.
Michael Lynton, can we talk? You may hope that you can manage your online-video issues by relocating the staff of Crackle.com, the money-losing startup you acquired for Sony in 2006, from Sausalito to Culver City. I'm sure with your experience at AOL and at Hollywood, you're confident enough to believe it's a business you can handle. But the real first step is admitting that you have a problem. We know all the cool kids were doing it when you purchased the site, then known as Grouper, for $65 million, but the $100 million you are rumored to have spent on satisfying your bandwidth cravings and making new employee and content-producer "friends" just shows how far you've sunk toward rock bottom. I can't imagine mainlining another 10-gigabit connection at a new San Diego datacenter will help. The good news, Michael, is that you're not alone. Eric Schmidt's YouTube habit has proven unmanageable as well. The note from a laid-off employee after the jump may feel like tough love, Michael, but think of it as an intervention from someone who cares.
The saga of Paramount Vantage arrived at its bloody conclusion this morning, when Rob Moore and John Lesher sent a memo announcing the termination of 60 jobs at the specialty label. The paring down follows the earlier absorption of Vantage into the 'Mount mother ship, where Lesher graduated earlier this year, Amy Israel hit the eject button and which will keep a handful of staffers on as part of the catchily titled Paramount Worldwide Acquisitions Group announced a few days ago.
Cuddly David Sze of Greylock Partners is the star VC of Web 2.0, with investments in Digg and Facebook among his portfolio. But he has a skeleton in his investing closet, a tipster says: An online-marketing firm called SoftCoin. Valassis, the coupon-distribution giant responsible for those hated inserts in newspapers, scotched an acquisition deal at the last minute, a tipster tells us, prompting heavy layoffs at SoftCoin. Venture capitalists get antsy about holding onto companies for too long, since they need to wind up their funds and return the proceeds to investors over time. Sze invested in SoftCoin in 2002. If SoftCoin goes under, will Sze's sunny disposition take a blow? Unlikely; we fully expect Sze to continue talking up his board-observer seat at Facebook. The tip:
Gnomish, Harley-riding media Methuselah and Tribune Co. boss Sam Zell inspires a bit of resentment amongst his minions, mainly for doing things like laying them all off while cussing them out. But his ex-Tribune employees are now striking back-on a blog! Prepare to be hoisted on the new media petard of broke, grizzled newsmen, Mr. Zell the multimillionaire!
Earlier today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that it's cutting almost 200 jobs-8% of its total workforce-due to "tough economic times." This afternoon, the Wall Street Journal sent out a staff memo saying that the paper is eliminating 50 editing jobs for "strategic" reasons. Less than an hour later, word came that Greg Osberg, president and publisher of Newsweek, is stepping down with no clear successor. (Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's crusade to appeal to the youth apparently hasn't taken effect quickly enough for Osberg, a digital advocate). This has been an extraordinarily bad day for print media by any standards. But take a look at the chart above-an illustration of newspaper industry stock prices over the past five years. There will be many more bad days to come.
Even as the New York Times staffs up its technology bureau, the Wall Street Journal is cutting back — at least on some of its higher-priced names. Among the names of layoff victims supplied by a tipster: Jason Fry, online Real Time columnist, and George Anders, author of Perfect Enough, the definitive business biography of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices will take a $948 million charge for Q2, the company announced this morning. Much like last year, the bulk of the writedown is due to the declining value of the company's ATI acquisition, for which it paid $5.4 billion in 2006. The resulting lines of cellphone graphics chips and digital TV chips just haven't sold as well as expected. The company's quad-core mobile graphics chip, codenamed Eagle, won't arrive to save the day until 2010. More important to some of us: A $32 million charge for employee severance packages.
A tipster writes to tell us that a number of fellow Sun employees have either coincidently decided to quit the Sun Microsystems en masse, or are being given the pink slip in a round of layoffs that's rumored to include anywhere from 30 to 65 percent of the marketing department. Has Sun's ponytailed CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, decided that his blog is all the marketing Sun needs? He must be hoping that once Wall Street catches wind of the cost-cutting, it'll boost the company's stock, which has lost over half its value in the last year. After the jump, a gracious parting letter from an employee who had been with the company for over a decade. Our suggestion is that if the layoffs bump up the company's share price, the departed might want to sell before it sinks any lower.
A couple months ago we brought you the elegiac newsroom photography of Martin Gee, a designer at the San Jose Mercury News who picked up a camera one day and documented the ghostly quality atmosphere inside a newspaper dessicated by layoffs. Well, guess what: Gee has now been laid off! With no warning. While he was on vacation. Sucks. He's pissed, but he never put down his camera. After the jump, three photos that express his feelings towards his old employer:
Yesterday's rumor of Hearst folding Quick & Simple magazine was quickly confirmed by several emails that poured in to our world news headquarters. (You know your magazine has problems when "rapidly rising paper prices" can do you in for good). But at least one staffer had such a P-M-A (Positive Mental Attitude, yall) that we feel compelled to share her note with you. Think of it as a shining example of how to feel good about a bad situation. With wine:
In a press release yesterday, financial software company Intuit announced a realignment, and by realignment, they mean laying off seven percent of the company's workforce — mostly in finance, according to a tipster. The press release went out well before individual employees were notified of their status, which can't have helped morale with everyone thinking they might get a pink slip. The company also revised earnings expectations downward. How did Wall Street react? After a brief boost Wednesday morning, the company's share price was right back to the level before the layoff announcement. Yahoo may be using the word reorganization instead of realignment, but in the end it will mean the same thing.(Photo by Peter Kazanjy)
The Miami Herald just laid copy editor Brayden Simms off. Amazingly, he also wrote a blog for them about saving money in this terrible economy. He wrote a depressing column about how they tricked him into taking a full-time job and then outsourced it to India. Now he is blogging-for the Herald!-about meeting with his financial planner to discuss how to survive without an income. This is just sick. Jesus, they're making him dig his own grave after his execution. Please forward this to every journalism student you know.
The Post's Page Six continues to dribble out names of reporters laid off by the Times, and continues to imply, but not say, the layoffs are fresh — which means they likely aren't, but are instead victims of the only newsroom layoffs in Times history, which concluded May 7. Today, Page Six names one person who took the buyout, metro reporter Anthony Ramirez, plus one person forced out — cops reporter Thomas Lueck. "Lueck was on his way to work when they phoned him to say his services were no longer needed," said the Post's tipster. The Post thinks this is "heartless." Right, not at all in the gallant vein of how the Post treated its own cops reporter. [Post]
Young man's video site Heavy will lay off nearly a quarter of its staff — 25 out of 105 workers — as it cuts costs and spins off its video ad network Husky Media into a separate company. Most of the layoffs will come from tech and ad sales. Heavy co-CEO Simon Assaad told PaidContent the re-org will make the site profitable this year. We're not surprised. Buying shady traffic cheap and then selling it on to ad agencies at a higher price may not be a way to build a business for the long haul, but it'll get that cash flowing fast.
Less than one month ago, Times Editor Bill Keller told staff the newspaper had completed the buyout and termination of about 100 reporters and editors and that "so far nothing... suggests we will be going through this again anytime soon." But the Post today named three writers exiting the Times, and implied the departures were involuntary. Medical-devices reporter Barnaby Feder was, according to an anonymous Post source, given four days to pack up his stuff; baseball writer Murray Chass is not returning from sick leave and arts writer Lawrence Van Gelder is retiring after 41 years. The tabloid's Page Six said a "bloody ax continues to swing" at the Times, but Feder is the only of the three clearly alleged to have been forced out, and it's possible he was cut prior to Keller's May memo and somehow had his exit delayed, or that he was ejected more recently for non-economic reasons. One termination, and two possibly voluntary departures for illness and retirement do not make for layoffs, Page Six. Weak sauce. Anyone have a better handle on what's going on at the Times? [Post]
This seems like a turning point of some sort. A tipster says the McCatchy-owned Kansas City Star just laid off the entire ad services department. And outsourced the jobs to India! Even more fun: before everyone's last day this summer, their Indian replacements will be flown in so the outgoing ad team can train them. McClatchy's already done this at some of their other holdings, including the Miami Herald, the Sacremento Bee, and the Raleigh News & Observer. Everyone please continue panicking. (Of course, journos didn't care so much when all the printing plant jobs disappeared, but still. The ad people work in the same building.)
A still-independent Yahoo filed a 10-Q with the SEC last week, putting in writing some its current realities as well as its expectations for the coming quarter. Severance packages and other layoff expenses cost Yahoo $29 million in the first quarter. It plans to pay another $15 million in the second. Yahoo also now faces at least 10 shareholder lawsuits following the Microsoft merger negotiations.
