|
Homepage
| Archives
| The Dead List
The UnDead
| Report a Passing
| Search
Click here to return to
The Editorial Dead ZoneTM
Homepage.
May 2001
- Cahners, a
business-to-business publisher, has cut
140 employees. Variety and Publishers Weekly, two trade
publicatons from Cahners, have escaped these cuts.
Cahners also terminated early summer hours (employees had
previously been allowed to leave at 1 PM on Fridays) and
cut back on annual raises.
Source: New York Post, BigPipe.com 5-31-01
- Journal Newspapers, has cut 20 of its 320 employees, including
11 editorial employees.
Source: The Washington Post 5-31-01
- FitnessLink,
a popular fitness website, is up for sale
and has ceased hiring writers for the time being.
FitnessLink is owned by
iBoost Technology, Inc.,
a new media company. When asked about the possible sale, Shannon Entin,
Editor and Founder of FitnessLink, said "FitnessLink is well-known
in fitness circles and I've prided myself on providing
original features from quality freelance writers for the
past 5 years. I sold the company last August and unfortunately,
the company that purchased us has decided to move in a new
direction and put us up for sale. We are no longer hiring any
writers during this transition period."
5-30-01
- Survivor, the prized Reality-TV show from CBS,
could lose viewers as more and more details come
out about how fictional some aspects of the show
may be.
Source: The Write News 5-30-01
- Cahners is
expected to announce job cuts, including cuts in
editorial positions, at many of its publications
including Publishers Weekly and Variety.
Employees will also no longer be allowed to leave
early on Friday afternoons.
Source: New York Post 5-30-01
- MarketWatch.com is cutting 40 employees, about 15%
of its staff. The company will also cut spending in other
areas to combat a difficult advertising market.
Source: News.com 5-30-01
- The Industry Standard, which announced some job
cuts last week, is expected to layoff more employees
this week. The layoffs will include editorial staff. It
is the third round of layoffs at the publication this year.
Source: New York Post 5-29-01
- Hookt.com Inc., a hip hop website, has filed
Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Source: Vibe 5-29-01
- Rightscenter.com, an online rights exchange,
has shut down its London office.
The company is revising its business strategy after
Reed Elsevier,
a major investor and the parent
company of Publishers Weekly, withdrew its support
for Rightscenter.com.
Source: PublishersWeekly 5-26-01
- Cardinal Books, a nonfiction publisher, is closing down
its ebook program, Maxxbooks.com.
Maxxbooks.com will shut down by June 1.
Source: PublishersWeekly 5-26-01
- ABC News is reducing its staff by 120 employees, about
10% of its 1,200 person workforce. 85 employees were
cut last week and given severance packages.
Source: L.A. Times 5-25-01
- The Industry Standard
has cut more of its editorial staff. The cuts
were less than 10% of the workforce. However, there may be
additional cuts in the near future. The Industry Standard
cut 69 employees in February, about 17% of its workforce.
Source: CNET 5-25-01
- Peoplenews.com,
a celebrity gossip website, has
lost its site editor. The company also announced that it
is restructuring to focus on building an offline brand.
Source: NetImperative 5-25-01
- Sesame Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street,
announced unexpected layoffs of 70 people, or 20% of its workforce.
Source: The New York Post 5-24-01
- CNN.com has cut another 20 Internet employees.
The company cut 400 employees earlier this year.
Source: The Washington Post 5-24-01
- Clear Ink, an advertising agency based in San Francisco,
has cut 40 employees.
Source: AdAge.com 5-24-01
- The New York Media Association has laid off 6 people, over
25% of its 23 person staff.
Source: DotComScoop 5-24-01
- BlueLight.com, an online retailer and ISP, has announced
a reorganization which include an unspecified number of layoffs.
The company is shifting control of most of
its marketing and merchandising chores to Kmart, which
owns 60% of the company.
Source: CNET 5-24-01
- Magazine Publishers in Trouble:
Already hurting from an advertising recession,
increased printing costs, rising postal rates and Internet
competition, magazine publishers are now faced with
a campaign from the Magazine P.A.P.E.R Project
which aims to convince magazine publishers to switch
to more environmentally preferable paper.
The PAPER initiative says that magazine
publishers are responsible each year for deforestation that
destroys over 30 million trees, which is enough to cover a
major U.S. national park. The PAPER project also reported
that more than 60% of the billions of magazines sent to
newsstands every year are discarded without being sold.
5-23-01
- Internet.com, an technology media
company, is cutting staff -- but they won't say
how many employees are being laid off.
Internet.com's CEO Alan Meckler also denied
rumors that the struggling company is up for sale.
Internet.com's shares fell under $3 per share at the
end of trading on Tuesday, May 22, 2001.
Source: SiliconAlleyDaily.com 5-22-01
- MediaBay, an audio book retailer,
has fired 14 of its employees, about
17% of its workforce.
Source: L.A. Times 5-22-01
- Time, Inc. is asking employees 50 years old with 15 years
of service to take a voluntary early retirement packages.
About 365 employees will receive the package.
Source: The New York Post 5-21-01
- Five employees have accepted voluntary buyouts from Hyperion,
Disney's book publishing division, as
part of Disney's cuts announced in April.
Source: PublishersWeekly 5-21-01
- The Spin Room, an interactive show
on CNN covering political spin, has been cancelled after a five month run.
Source: Ted's Turnovers.com 5-18-01
- The Miami Herald will cut 10% of its workforce,
about 180 employees. The company also said that about
700 employees will be offered buyouts.
Source: The Miami Herald. 5-17-01
- Chicago-based Hollinger International Inc.,
publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph
and the Jerusalem Post,
warned that if the slow advertising market continues
it will announce layoffs later this year.
Source: The Globe and Mail 5-17-01
- Forbes ASAP is being folded into a new spinoff
that combines Forbes ASAP with Forbes.com: Best
of the Web. Previously, Forbes ASAP was mailed
bi-monthly with regular issues of Forbes magazine.
Source: MSNBC 5-17-01
- Red Herring, Inc. is cutting another 54 employees, over 20% of its
staff. Red Herring laid off 57 employees last year.
Source: CNET,
Financial Times 5-17-01
- Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. is consolidating
its print and online
operations into one unit. No new layoffs are expected
as part of the combination, but Britannica.com has laid
off 150 employees in the last six months.
Source: TheStandard.com,
Newsbytes,
New York Times 5-17-01
- CyberRebate.com,
a discount website focusing
on rebate offers, has closed its doors. They company
had just recently added books to its product line. 5-17-01
- New Urban Entertainment Television (NUE-TV) has
laid off all of its news and programming staff -- about 35 employees.
Source: The Washington Post 5-17-01
- About.com
has laid off an unspecified number of team members
from its editorial and guide operations groups. The
editorial staff will be significantly reduced and
will be split into two teams. One group will focus on
the integration of About and Primedia while the other
group will continue to oversee content development
on About.com. In a letter to its guides, About.com
warned "we will also rely on Guides to be more self-sufficient
than ever before and will take quick action when Guides
fall short of their commitment to users or to About."
5-16-01
- Brill's Content
still owes payments on outstanding contracts to writers,
vendors and contractors who were under contract at Inside
before the merger.
Source:
New York Daily News 5-16-01
- USA Today has cut 100 positions since January, 5% of
its 2,000 employees.
Source: Washington
Post 5-16-01
- Bertelsmann is giving up on Bol.com, its global online bookstore
unit. The unit will be merged back into its book clubs division.
Bertelsmann still owns 40% of Barnes&Noble.com. There has also
been speculation that Barnes&Noble.com may be merged back into its
parent company, Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Source: Financial
Times, The New York Post 5-15-01
- The Mercury News is planning on cutting 120 positions,
about 8% of its workforce. The company is offering
early retirement and voluntary buyout programs to reach
the 120 cuts.
Source: Mercury
News 5-15-01
- News publisher Sun Media is cutting 302 positions, including
86 layoffs at The Toronto Sun.
Full-time positions will be reduced by 180 people, part-time by 34, freelance by 15 while an additional 73 vacant positions will remain unfilled.
Source: The
Toronto Star, Sun Media. 5-15-01
- Bad News for Publishers:
The number of people who choose not to read is on the
rise. At the same time the number of voracious readers is
also declining.
Source: The Washington Post 5-15-01
- Ann Handley and Andy Bourland, the
founders of ClickZ.com,
have left the company.
The ClickZ Network was sold
to Internet.com in September, 2000. 5-14-01
- Philadelphia Newspapers
Inc., publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer
and Philadelphia Daily News, is cutting 200 jobs -- about
6% of the workforce.
Source: Dow Jones 5-14-01
- The Boston Globe announced that it is refocusing its
efforts on local news coverage in the Greater Boston region and
ceasing publication of New Hampshire Weekly, a separate section
of the Boston Sunday Globe devoted to news, information and
advertising for the Granite State. The last issue of New
Hampshire Weekly will appear Sunday, June 24. 5-11-01
- fodors.com is being restructured by Random House, Inc. and
13 employees wil be laid off in the process.
Source: Publishers Weekly 5-11-01
- The World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. has
decided to discountinue the
XFL. Ratings for the games
steadily deteriorated each week. 5-11-01
- LifeMinders, a company which delivers
email newsletters and direct marketing, is down
just 30-35 employees. The company may liquidate
its assets if a buyer cannot be found.
Source: DotComScoop 5-10-01
- StarMedia Network, a Latin American portal, is
laying off 25% of its employees.
Source: TheStandard.com 5-10-01
- WebMD.com, a health
website, lost
over a billion dollars for the second
straight quarter and fired another 350 employees.
Source: Newsbytes 5-9-01
- Questia Media Inc., an online subscription research service,
has cut 139 employees. The company is down to 144 employees from
its high of 300.
Source: Newsbytes 5-9-01
- Business Week Online is cutting about
a dozen editorial employees.
Source: New York Post 5-9-01
- theglobe.com,
once a high-flying IPO, was recently delisted from the Nasdaq.
NetSlaves provides analysis of theglobe.com's
recent 10Q filing in its series of 10Q reports. The
findings suggest that all is not well for theglobe.com
shareholders and employees.
Source: NetSlaves.com 5-8-01
- Terra Lycos, a spanish Internet company which
owns search portal Lycos.com,
is cutting 15% of its staff.
Source: CNET 5-8-01
- Excite, a search engine and media company, is in
major trouble. The company, which recently laid off 380
employees, is seeking a buyer and may have to shut down
if one cannot be found.
Source: Business Week 5-8-01
- Time, Inc. is ceasing publication of Hotdots,
an Internet shopping magazine.
Source: Wooden Horse Publishing 5-8-01
- Trouble at TerraShare:
Writers have reported that TerraShare.com has not been
paying the "Gurus" who host and edit special
interest websites on TerraShare.com. TerraShare is
also not responding to emails from its concerned Gurus.
Gurus at TerraShare.com make $50 per month, according to
terms posted on its
website. TerraShare.com's model is similar to About.com's, however,
About.com calls its independent contractors "Guides"
instead of "Gurus". About.com recently fired 85 of its Web
Guides. TerraShare.com,
which was founded in June, 1999, recently announced the hire
of investment bank, Alterity Partners, to assist in the company
in finding
a buyer. TerraShare has stated that it was hoping to complete a
sale by Mid-April; to date, no sale has been announced.
TerraShare.com's affiliate program with Commission Junction
was also recently cancelled, another sign that the company may
be running out of funds -- and time. The company claims to
have traffic of 7.5 million unique visitors per month.
TerraShare did not respond to inquiries when asked to
comment on this story.
5-7-01
- More layoffs from the puzzling Brill's Content and
Inside.com merger.
Stephen Brill, the head of the combined publications, has already
announced a change in plans. Now there will not be a
new publication called Inside Content as planned. Instead,
Brill's Content will continue, but as a quarterly publication.
An additional 8-12 employees will be let go, as well.
Source: The
New York Post, Financial Times 5-7-01
- Ziff Davis Media has
cut fifty employees -- 5% of its 1000 workforce.
Source: The
New York Post 5-4-01
- The Working Woman Network has closed and laid off
its staff. The Network
included the WorkingWoman.com and Working Mother.com
websites.
Source: The New York Post 5-3-01
- Adobe Systems which produces publishing software and tools,
including ebook reading software, will place about 2,000 employees
on a mandatory one-week vacation in early July. Adobe employs about 2,800 people.
Source: Newsbytes 5-2-01
- Softlock.com, operating as Digital Goods, has shut down.
39 employees were let go including all vice presidents and the president/CEO.
Only four employees remain at the company to wind down
operations. The company provided digital content marketing
services for publishers and was one of the distributors for Stephen
King's Riding the Bullet. 5-2-01
- Edupoint.com, an online corporate training resource,
has run out of money and cut the 50 remaining employees.
Source: Union-Tribune.com 5-2-01
- eHobbies.com let
35 employees go and began winding down operations last week. The
online hobby and comics retailer is now down to just 15 employees
and is hoping for a buyer to come in and save the company.
Source: CNET 5-2-01
- The New York Times Co. is cutting 100 employees from its
regional newspaper group.
Source: CBS Marketwatch. 5-2-01
- The New York Daily News is considering 20 layoffs with
most of them coming from the editorial department.
Source: Editor & Publisher 5-1-01
- IPC is closing Nova, a fashion and lifestyle magazine.
Source: MediaGuardian 5-1-01
- Excite is cutting 380 employees, about 13% of
its workforce.
Source: DotComScoop.com
5-1-01
Archives Homepage:
Click here to
return to the Archives homepage.
|
|
