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June 2001
- Freelancers Win. Publishers Delete.
The New York Times has started pulling over 115,000
freelance articles from Lexis-Nexis in response to
the Supreme Court's decision in the Tasini case.
The National Writer Union is asking writers not to
sign new contracts with the company as a protest.
The New York Times plans to appeal to congress
to draft new legislation and does not plan to negotiate
with the NWU. Other publishers also plan to pull
articles in response to the Supremem Court's ruling in favor
of freelancers.
Source: Newsbytes 6-29-01
- 24 employees have been cut from the marketing/sales departments
of Ziff Davis Media's consumer magazine division, the
publisher of Yahoo! Internet Life, Family PC
and Expedia Travels.
Source: MediaWeek 6-29-01
- CMP Media is ceasing publication of Teleconnect Magazine and
laying off several employees. Teleconnect will end with
the July issue and its circulation will be rolled into
Communications Convergence magazine.
Source: Press Access 6-29-01
- The American Spectator Magazine is laying off half of
its 20 employees. Source:
The Washington Post (near bottom of page). 6-29-01
- Microsoft has announced plans to remove the highly
controversial Smart Tags from its next browser release -- for
now. The company has made it clear that it will try to bring
them back (or a redesigned version of them) in a future release
of Internet Explorer. The company admitted that the Smart Tags
have already been released to an undisclosed number of people
in the beta test version of the browser. The company claimed
that it did not have enough time to remove the Smart Tags
before the beta test version was released; however it has
taken no action to stop downloads of the beta test version
which is still available.
Many legal experts believe that the Smart Tags violate the
copyrights of authors because they create unauthorized
derivative works, as this article explains. Microsoft
decided to remove its Smart Tags based on a high volume of
highly negative feedback. 6-28-01
Source: CNET, Wall Street Journal
- The Knot Inc., an online wedding resource, received a
Nasdaq Staff Determination on June 21, 2001 because it
failed to comply with the minimum bid price requirement for
continued listing set forth in Marketplace Rule 4450(a)(5),
and that its securities are, therefore, subject to delisting
from The Nasdaq National Market. The Knot Inc. has
recently been trading at less than $.50 per share.
6-27-01
- NBCi
has cancelled its free file and picture storage service
and is moving its gaming-related content.
Source: CNET 6-27-01
- Mibrary, a web-based application for organizing and
managing electronic books and other digital content,
has shut down. Mibrary also launched the
Alan Kay
Award for eBook Innovation in 2000.
6-27-01
- Inside.com has terminated its distribution agreement
with Yahoo. Inside used to distribute articles on Yahoo's
new service, but will no longer do so. Inside.com is now focused
on charging for its content, with little or no free content
offerings. Plans are for Inside.com to be suscription only
with a monthly rate of $3.95. If other content providers
follow Inside's model then Yahoo could see its Yahoo News
service greatly diminished.
Source: CNET 6-27-01
- Fast Company has let ten of its employees go, about 9%
of its staff. The company blamed weak advertising sales for
the cutbacks.
Source: MediaWeek 6-27-01
- InternetContent.net has shut down. The company provided
a content news website and content conferences. At its June
event, the Internet Content West show in Los Angeles,
there were only 35 paying attendees. Last year this same
conference brought 600 paying attendees. The staff hopes
to be able to re-activate the site and conference when conditions
improve. Source: IC Going on ICE Letter 6-27-01
- Dead Zone Feature
Bad News for
Authors and Publishers: Microsoft Proceeds
With Controversial Smart Tags
Microsoft has launched its Internet Explorer 6 preview with the
highly controversial Smart Tags included. Smart Tags are a
new feature that converts keywords into links on any publisher's,
individual's or writer's webpages. Legal experts have already
opined that this practice likely infringes on the copyrights of
authors, because an unauthorized derivative work is created
when the Smart Tags are deployed. 6-26-01
Click here for complete details.
- Publishers are still sticking with several Dot-com boom
related book titles -- despite the recent decline in Internet
and tech stocks. In many case the downturn happened so quickly
that publishers were not able to halt publication. However,
print runs and marketing budgets for some of the
books are being cut.
Source: PublishersWeekly 6-25-01
- Us Weekly has cut several in-house editorial positions.
Source: Press Access 6-25-01
- Space Illustrated, the new print magazine from
Space.com, a space resources and news provider, suspended
publication after the February issue. The publication plans
an August return, but the print run has been cut from
150,000 to 50,000.
Source: Media Life Magazine 6-25-01
- Microsoft
is shutting down its Listbot email service.
The service will end on August 6, 2001, but
list data will remain available until August 20th.
A new $29.95 per month mailing list and newsletter service,
called List
Builder, has taken its place. This is part of a growing
trend as many companies are either terminating free hosting
services or
starting to charge fees for these services. Some of these
services include: free web space, free disk storage,
and free mailing list hosting.
Source: DotComScoop, ListBot 6-22-01
- iVillage has cut almost half of its staff. After completing
its merger with Women.com
the combined company has cut over 150 of its 350 employees.
Some of Women.com's employees had already been notified
about the layoffs prior to the merger.
Source: The Write News, CNET 6-21-01
- Time Magazine is cutting about 38 employees, about
6% of its workforce.
Source: New York
Post, MediaWeek 6-21-01
- Journal Sentinel Inc., part of Journal Communications,
has announced plans to cuts
30 positions, about 2.4% of its workforce.
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 6-21-01
- eLaw.com, an online resource for legal professionals,
has closed its doors. The company employed 44 people.
Source: American City Business Journal 6-21-01
- Lee Enterprises, which publishes 23 daily newspapers,
has cut 2.6% of its non-sales positions.
Source: MediaWeek 6-20-01
- More newspaper job cuts. Belo, publisher of the
Dallas Morning News, cut 388 jobs from December 2000 to April, 2001
(about 5% of its workforce) and plans more job cuts this year.
Also, newspaper publisher
Media General
has cut 400 positions (about 5% of its workforce) since
this time last year.
Source MediaWeek, Editor & Publisher 4-20-01
- Upside Media is looking for a buyer. The technology
media company has reduced its staff from 110 to 45
and has not paid some freelancers for months.
Source: SiliconValley.com 6-20-01
- Newspaper publisher Knight Ridder has announced that
it will be cutting 1,700 positions. Knight Ridder announced
earlier this year that it would be cutting positions at its
32 daily newspapers, but did not give an exact number. The
1,700 positions are in addition to 400 job cuts that have
already occured this year. The total number of layoffs is
about 10% of Knight Ridder's 22,000 employees.
Source: CNNfn, USA Today, Financial Times 6-18-01
- The New York Times Co. announced that it will be cutting
1,200 positions. This is about 8% of its 14,000 employees.
Source: MarketWatch,
Financial Times
6-18-01
- iSyndicate.com
is filing Chapter 11 and its assets will
be acquired by YellowBrix,
which provides syndication and content management software.
Layoffs of 160 employees earlier this year left iSyndicate
with only about 40 employees.
YellowBrix has also laid off employees this year.
Source: Newsbytes, Internet.com, Editor & Publisher
6-18-01
- Ecampus.com, an online college retailer, has filed
Chapter 11, and fired most of its staff.
A company named Book Acquisition is looking
to acquire Ecampus.com.
Source: PublishersWeekly 6-18-01
- Digital:Convergence Corporation, a Dallas-based company
which developed the CueCat, a scanning device which turns
print cues or codes in magazines and
newspapers into hyperlinks, has fired 225 employees -- leaving
only a dozen or so left at the company. Digital Convergence
had recently announced
a deal with Harcourt College Publishers.
Source: DallasNews.com,
CNET 6-18-01
- Money.com has
laid off 8 of its 25 employees. AOL Time Warner is merging
the Money.com website and the remaining staff with
the CNNfn website.
Source: MediaWeek 6-18-01
- G+J USA
has ceased publication of 15 small Family Circle
special interest titles and laid off 9 employees.
Source: Media Week 6-18-01
- Salon.com has received a delisting notice from the
NASDAQ. Salon's shares have been trading well below
the $1 minimum price level. Recently its shares have
traded in the $.25 to $.30 cent range. The company
plans to appeal the delisting and is considering a
reverse-stock split
to get its price back above the NASDAQ minimum requirement.
Source: The Write News 6-15-01
- Commission Junction, which provides affiliate solutions
and marketing services for numerous media and
publishing companies including The New York
Times, Ask Jeeves, USA Today, A&E, Harlequin
Enterprises, Harcourt, Citysearch and Audible.com, has laid off 60
of its 150 employees, over 40% of its total workforce.
Source: Revenews 6-15-01
- Cinescape, a fantasy/sf/horror fanzine,
has ceased publishing and the entire staff
has been fired. The website for
Cinescape is no longer
being updated. Marc Camron, the publisher of Cinescape, is
looking for a buyer for Cinescape and its sister publications.
Fandom Inc., which purchased Cinescape last year, announced
in April, 2001 that it
would shut
down its online operations.
Source: Sci Fi Wire 6-15-01
- Tribune Company
has announced a voluntary retirement program. It is
expected to reduce the company's workforce by 3 percent, with
the bulk of reductions being made in the publishing group.
In addition to the voluntary program, further staff
reductions in the publishing group will reduce
its staff by another 3 percent. Including reductions that have
already taken place, by the end of this year, Tribune Publishing
will have reduced its staff by 10 percent or more than 2,000
full and part-time staff since merging with
Times Mirror in June 2000. 6-15-01
- Free storage sites are either shutting down or
starting to charge fees. Xdrive recently switched from a free
service to $4.95 a month.
i-drive
and Driveway.com have recently removed their free
consumer services. Zing.com which provided free photo
storage and display services has shut down.
MySpace.com and eCircles.com have
shut down. FreeDrive
is shifting from free storage to a fee-based service. The list goes
on... Free web-space providers might be changing business models
as well.
Homestead,
a free web hosting service with 4 million customers, recently
notified its members that it plans to start charging
$10 per month.
Other free web hosting providers could soon follow suit.
And following free
web hosting and free storage,
other free
web service providers, such
as free mailing list hosts and free chat prodivers,
may shut down or develop
new fee-based business models. Small publishers and individuals
using these services may soon see their online costs increase.
Source: USA
Today, CNET, TechTV. 6-15-01
- The Kansas City Star is cutting 125 full-time positions,
about 7% of its staff. These layoffs are part of the
reductions announced
earlier this year by Knight Ridder, a newpaper publishing
company. Source: Editor & Publisher 6-15-01
- Humongous Entertainment, a children's computer game company,
has laid off 82 employees, about 40% of its workforce.
Source: The New York Times 6-15-01
- Times are tough at Red Herring Communications. The technology
media company has laid off 111 employees since late last year and
recently cancelled its July 31st Herring on Hollywood conference.
The company is also looking to consolidate its office space.
Source: SF Gate 6-14-01
- The Boston Globe will discontinue the Saturday
morning early edition of its Sunday newspaper
after June 24. 6-14-01
- Forbes.com has laid off 17 of its 270 employees, about 6% of its
workforce.
Source: MarketWatch.com
6-14-01
- Rumors have been surfacing that iSyndicate is close
to either a sale of its assets or a shutdown without a sale.
ScreamingMedia,
a competing syndicator, has been suggested as a company that
might purchase the assets.
Either way, it appears that iSyndicate will be on The
Dead List soon.
Source: CNET 6-14-01
- Find-a-publisher.com, a database of
publishers and literary agents, and
ContentSupply.com have
shut down. 6-14-01
- Media giant Bertelsmann is gearing up for a
2004 IPO and is looking to buy out minority
shareholders at Gruner + Jahr and other subsidiaries.
The Jahrs, the founders of Gruner + Jahr, a
family owned magazine publisher of publications
including Family Circle, YM and Rosie,
see things differently and are refusing to give up their shares.
Source: New
York Post 6-13-01
- The Industry Standard has dropped the "Internet Economy"
from its tagline. The redesigned publication, which has suffered
three staff cuts already this year, will now focus on
the "Information Economy".
Source: The Write News 6-13-01
- Centaur Communications is closing New Media Investor,
its new economy magazine. Staff will be moved to Centaur's
New Media Age magazine.
Source: MediaGuardian 6-12-01
- Prima Publishing,
which was purchased by Random House
in March, 2001, has laid off 60 of Prima's 140 employees (43%) as part of an integration
process. Prima Publishing is a publisher of lifestyle books, computer
game guides and health books. Random House is also
looking to sell Prima Tech, the computer book division
of Prima Publishing. Random House will close down the
computer book section if no buyer can be found and lay off 20 additional employees.
Source: PublishersWeekly 6-11-01
- The demise of Automatic
Media and its group of culture
websites (Suck, Feed, Planet and Altculture) is receiving
lots of media attention. Here
are links to a few of the articles:
The New York Post, CNET, The Industry Standard,
The New York Times, Salon, MediaWeek, Inside.com and another
article at Salon.
- The Wall of Sound has officially closed.
Loading wallofsound.com
now forwards you to MrShowbiz.com, another Disney Internet
entertainment property. 6-11-01
- Intervisual Books, which produces pop-up books, dimensional playsets,
game boards, and cloth books, announced that it received notification
from Nasdaq on June 4, 2001, that its common stock is subject to
delisting from the Nasdaq SmallCap Market for failure to comply
with Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(B), which requires the maintenance
of a minimum of $2,000,000 in net tangible assets.
6-11-01
- Automatic
Media, Inc. has ceased operations and laid off all of its
21 employees due to
an inability to secure additional financing. Automatic-Media
owns the websites Suck.com, Feedmag.com, Plastic and altculture.
We already mentioned (on 6-8-01) that Suck.com and
Feedmag.com are going
on hiatus in hopes of obtaining future funding.
Plastic is still running for the time being and has
posted
an article denying the rumors that it will be closing down.
6-9-01
- Mysterynot.com?
MysteryNet.com,
a mystery resource which includes
online mysteries, a book club and the official online
home of Nancy Drew, has become unresponsive to mystery
writers and appears to be reducing its online content offerings.
Publication of some of its regular mystery
columns, including Solve It and See-n-Solve, has apparently been put
on hiatus: deadlines have been missed and, instead of new columns, reruns
of old columns are being posted. Freelance writers inform
us that the company is no longer responding to queries
and/or requests for writer's guidelines.
MysteryNet.com failed to respond to inquiries, when
asked to comment on this story. 6-8-01
- Over 1/3 of the Women.com
staff will be cut if the iVillage.com
acquistion goes through on June 18th as planned. Notices
have already been sent to Women.com employees. More layoffs
are also possible after the transition period.
6-8-01
- Suck.com is taking
a summer holiday. They have left a Q&A explanation about
the summer hiatus on the website. Feed magazine
also reported that it is
in suspended animation and will be running reruns (older content)
until it can find a new buyer. Both Feed
and Suck were purchased by Automatic Media, Inc. last year.
6-8-01
- About 3,000 employees accepted Disney's
buyout offer. This leaves another 1,000 jobs still to be
cut as part of Disney's reduction
of 4,000 jobs, which it announced in April. The pink
slips will be delivered sometime between now and July 31st
according to a Disney spokesperson.
Source: L.A. Times 6-8-01
- AOL Time Warner is acquiring new economy
business publication Business 2.0 and
merging it with its Ecompany Now magazine. The
websites for business2.com and Ecompany Now will be
combined into a single website at business2.com.
Almost all of the staff of Business 2.0 will be fired.
Source: Newsbytes, CNET 6-8-01
- Less Fools. Financial information provider
Motley Fool has laid
off another 45 employees, 20% of its workforce. These layoffs
follow the reduction of 115 positions in February.
Source: Newsbytes 6-7-01
- AOL Time Warner is planning more managements changes
and reorganizations. 2,400 job cuts have
already occured since January.
Source: L.A. Times 6-7-01
- Reuters is expected to lay off another 500 employees.
Source: Financial Times 6-7-01
- Access Denied: Access Magazine,
a weekly tech insert in newspapers,
has been suspended. June 17 will be the
last issue. Source: Editor & Publisher 6-7-01
- Connecticut's State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
is now looking into the fictional reviewer created
by Sony Pictures. David Manning of
The Ridgefield Press was invented by Sony's ad department
to help them get good reviews.
The Ridgefield
Press was unaware of the situation and had never heard
of the fictional David Manning.
Quotes from the reviews were then used in advertisements
to promote the movies.
Source: Editor & Publisher,
Newsweek 6-6-01
- The Seattle Times has laid off a few more employees.
Its competitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is currently under
a hiring freeze and has not ruled out future layoffs.
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer 6-6-01
- The SF Chronicle has condensed its book section
as part of a redesign. The section has shrunk from about
12 pages to 8 1/2 pages in the process.
Source: PublishersWeekly 6-6-01
- Web portal Excite.com has closed its
France, Germany and Spain media operations.
Source: DotComScoop 6-6-01
- localmusic.com
has closed down temporarily and will close down
permanently without new financial backing. 6-6-01
- Layoffs at U.S. News & World Report are expected
to be around 10%.
Source: New York Post 6-5-01
- Sciences Magazine, a National Magazine Award winner
published by the New York
Academy of Sciences, will cease publication. Its six
staff members were let go. The magazine was terminated in an
effort to cut costs.
Source: The New York Times 6-5-01
- As expected, TerraShare.com is shutting down.
People using its web hosting service will have
a week to move their files.
We reported earlier this month (5-8-01) that TerraShare
had stopped paying writers and was no longer responding
to emails. TerraShare.com had been paying its "Gurus",
writers who edited special interest websites,
$50 a month. In a letter to members TerraShare.com refers
members to a http://www.terrashare.com/moving web
address to find alternative hosting resources, but this
url is not currently working. TerraShare hired Alterity
Partners, an investment bank, to assist in the sale
-- but the company was
still unable to find buyer. 6-4-01
- A new report suggests
that Inside.com peaked at
a wimpy 1,200 paid subscribers. This would mean that its
average monthly subscriber rate was even lower. The story
also tells that even after Inside.com was sold there
were still hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid and
unrecorded freelance contracts. This made Stephen Brill
unhappy. Plans are for Inside.com to
be suscription only with a monthly rate of $3.95.
Source: The New Yorker 6-4-01
- Creative Planet
is cutting another 15% of its staff.
This follows a 30% reduction in staff last December. The
company plans to slim down to 105-110 employees and
focus on its business products and services.
Source: The New York Post 6-4-01
- AOL Time Warner
is closing the Time Inc. editorial
research library. Half of the staff employed to maintain the
library will be let go. The remaining staff will be given jobs
elsewhere at Time Inc.
Source: The New York Times 6-4-01
- Sony Invents Fake Reviewer. Sony Pictures has admitted that it
invented a reviewer to help them get better reviews.
David Manning of The Ridgefield Press, the fictional
reviewer, was created by Sony's ad department
to help them get great reviews
for recent films including A Knight’s Tale,
The Animal, Hollow Man and Vertical Limit.
Quotes from the reviews were then used in advertisements
to promote the movies.
Source: Newsweek. 6-4-01
- LearningStar Corp., a developer, manufacturer, and retailer
of educational products, was delisted from The
Nasdaq National Market and will now trade on
The Nasdaq SmallCap Market. 6-4-01
- Layoffs, including cuts in editorial,
are expected at U.S. News & World Report.
Editor Stephen G. Smith is also leaving the magazine and
will be replaced by Brian P. Duffy, who is current executive
editor. Source: The New York Times 6-2-01
- Palm, Inc. will
layoff more employees this summer. The company,
which produces handhelds and recently purchased ebook distributor
and publisher Peanut Press, laid off about 16% of its workforce
in April.
Source: ZDNet,
CNET 6-1-01
- The U.S. edition of Revolution, an Internet marketing
publication, will be suspended. The magazine is published
by U.K. publisher Haymarket Group. Haymarket will continue
to publish the British edition of Revolution.
Source: Media Life Magazine 6-1-01
- AtomShockwave.com,
an online entertainment provider created when AtomFilms
and Shockwave.com combined, has
laid off most of its staff and closed two of its offices.
Source: SiliconValley.com 6-1-01
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