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September 2001
- About Cuts Guides and Employees
About.com has cut 300 of its GuideSites and sixty
employees. Before the cuts About.com claimed to
have over 700 GuideSites. The company is also making plans
to convert its site into more of a shopping-oriented web portal. Remaining
guides will be required to produce product reviews and create holiday
gift lists. Primedia, the company which bought About.com,
has recently seen its shares plummet over 40% into the
low $2 range.
Source: Newsbytes 9-28-01
- Motley Fool,
an online financial news service, is planning
on laying off half of its 187 employees. It is the third round
of cuts this year for Motley Fool which at one point had close to
400 employees.
Source: Washingtonpost.com 9-28-01
- Rightsworld.com, an
online publishing rights marketplace, has closed down.
A message on the website reads: "It is with great regret to
inform you that due to extremely difficult market conditions,
rightsworld has discontinued its publishing rights
marketplace as of September, 2001."
9-28-01
- AboriginalSF
is ceasing publication. Subscribers of the sf magazine will
receive copies of Absolute Magnitude instead.
AboriginalSF was published by DNA Publications and
the 2nd Renaissance Foundation Inc.
Source: Sci Fi Wire, Locus Magazine 9-26-01
- About.com, a
collection of web guides, is eliminating
more of its GuideSites.
An
email was sent to Guides whose sites were being
removed. Earlier this year the company eliminated
about fifty of its GuideSites. About.com is owned
by Primedia, Inc.
Source: F***edCompany.com 9-26-01
- Hoover's, a
provider of online business information and databases,
is planning to cut 20% of its staff.
Source: CBS MarketWatch 9-25-01
- Jupiter Media Metrix, an internet research company,
is planning to lay off as much
as 600 employees, or 1/3 of its staff. The company laid off
18% of its employees in April of this year.
Source: CNET 9-25-01
- TheStandard.com has posted a final goodbye on its
website. TheStandard.com's assets were
purchased at auction by AOL and IDG.
Source: TheStandard.com 9-25-01
- ExciteAtHome announced that it plans to lay off 500
employees over the next three months. Excite has had several
rounds of layoffs this year and rumors suggest that the company
may be nearing bankruptcy. Excite will close MatchLogic,
its interactive marketing service company.
Source: Newsbytes, Financial Times, CNET 9-25-01
- Reciprocal, Inc., a provider of digital rights
management and distribution services, announced that it will be
reducing its staff by 65%. In April of this year Reciprocal
laid off 50 employees -- about 29% of its workforce.
Source: The Write News 9-25-01
- Mode magazine, a fashion monthly targeted
to full-figured American woman, is ceasing publication.
The shutdown affects a staff of 38 people.
The October Mode issue,
which has already been printed, will be the final issue
of the magazine. Source: The Write News 9-25-01
- The law firm of Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman, LLP has launched
the website
PrimediaClassAction.com
for a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Primedia employee
against the media company Primedia,
Inc. The suit alleges that Primedia and certain
Primedia subsidiaries and executives violated federal racketeering
statutes (RICO) and committed acts of fraud, breach of contract
and failure to pay wages due.
Primedia called the lawsuit "frivolous and baseless" in a
statement made to DotCom Scoop in August.
9-25-01
- UpsideToday.com, the online edition of the
technology magazine Upside Magazine, has shut down.
A message on the website says, "We have fought long and hard to stay afloat, but now we must
say good-bye."
The website says the print magazine will continue publishing.
Source: UpsideToday.com 9-24-01
- Bad Times For Travel Publishers
The airline and travel
industries have already been hard hit by the
terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, this also causes
problems for travel magazine publishers, including cancellation
of advertising campaigns.
Source: MediaWeek 9-24-01
- Microsoft's MSN service and Yahoo are being criticized
for containing websites, clubs and communities which
contain pornographic material.
Source: L.A. Times 9-24-01
- A news story posted on Yahoo's
news service was altered
by a yacker. Yahoo claims it has closed the security hole.
Source: News.com 9-21-01
- Book Fairs and Author Tours Cancel
The terrorist attacks on America have caused numerous author tours
to cancel or end prematurely and some book launches
have also been rescheduled, delayed or shelved.
New York is Book
Country has also been canceled
because of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
However, the effects on the book
industry and book sales are expected to be temporary.
And at least some authors are starting to write again,
as reported in this article from the New York Times.
Source: USA
Today, L.A. Times, SFGate.com,
New York Times 9-19-01
- Attacks Create Problems for Media Industry
Articles and reports continue to indicate that the
terrorist attacks have caused a reduction in advertising.
Media companies were already suffering from a steep
reduction in advertising sales this year. Some media
companies including the New York Times Company and
Viacom have already indicated that lower advertising revenues
will affect earnings. Media stocks have also
suffered since the markets re-opened on Monday.
Source: Editor & Publisher, Financial Times, Media Week,
MediaGuardian 9-19-01
- Freespech.org
announced that on October 7, it will discontinue
its free hosting service and start charging monthly fees.
Websites that do not sign up for the fee-based service
will be deleted.
Eventually all providers of free hosting services,
including website hosting and mailing list services will probably
charge fees. Homestead
and Yahoo's Geocities have both
recently launched fee-based hosting services.
Source: CNET 9-19-01
- The New York Daily News is suspending the Daily News
Express, its free evening paper. Distribution difficulties
and safety concerns because of the terrorist attack in New York were blamed
for the suspension. Some staff will be let go as a result.
Source: MediaWeek 9-19-01
- Smashed Atom,
an interactive television company, is shutting its
doors and laying off all 40 employees.
Source: MediaGuardian 9-19-01
- Altavista,
an online search portal, has cut another
160 employees -- about 30% of its workforce.
Altavista is now down to 340 employees.
Source: CNET 9-17-01
- CanWest is cutting 130 employees at the
National Post,
a Toronto daily newspaper. This is about 20% of the
newspaper's staff. The company is also ceasing publication
of Saturday Night, a weekend arts magazine.
Source: The Toronto Star 9-17-01
- Newspaper Industry Recession Looms:
Newspaper publishers are reporting that advertising demand
will be hurt by the terrorist attacks on September 11th.
The decreased ad sales will lower revenues for
newspaper publishers in what has already been
a down year.
Source: Dow Jones 9-17-01
- Engage, Inc. is exiting the ad-serving business and will
focuse on its software products. Engage is also cutting
100 positions related to its online advertising division.
Source: MediaGuardian,
iMarketingNews.com 9-17-01
- PCM, a Dutch newspaper publisher, is eliminating
most of its Internet portals. Several jobs will also be cut.
Source:europemedia.net 9-17-01
- CNN has canceled its Sports Tonight program and laid off
11 employees.
Source: TVInsite.com 9-17-01
- Advertising recession to worsen. Ad sales which
were already in bad shape, are expected to worsen
because of the terrorist attack on September 11th.
Source:
Financial Times,
MSNBC, USA Today 9-15-01
- Lycos Europe has laid off 300 employees.
Source: Financial Times 9-15-01
- Primedia's Upstart magazine is ceasing publication.
Upstart covered the CLEC industry and was spun off from
Telephony magazine. The staff from
Upstart is being integrated back into Telephony magazine.
Source: IndustryClick.com 9-15-01
- TheCompost.com,
which tracks dot-com closings, is closing
its own doors. On its website the company states that it is
shutting down because of "a severe slowdown in dot com demise"
-- which may be a good sign for the Internet industry.
Source: Newsbytes 9-15-01
- BET.com and HarperCollins have put plans for a joint
online bookstore on hold. The bookstore was to be named
Amistad Bookstore, based a Amistad Press, a black book
imprint owned by HarperCollins.
Source: New York Daily News 9-15-01
- Yahoo's Geocities,
is putting a freeze on some of the
more popular websites using its free hosting services. The
move appears to be an attempt to get more of the websites
to convert to its new premium services.
Notices from Yahoo were sent to Geocities users with over
3GB of data-transer per month.
Source: CNET 9-11-01
- A report by the The Privacy Foundation accuses
Monster.com, an
online job database, of
reselling resumes that have been posted on its websites. The report
indicates that resumes are sold to other job sites and
that resumes posted on Monster.com may still remain even after
they are deleted by the job seeker.
Source: Wired, Washingtonpost.com 9-11-01
- The L.A. Times is closing it weekly editions in San Gabriel
Valley Weekly, the South Bay Weekly and the Westside Weekly
and terminating 18 positions.
Source: Associated Press 9-10-01
- Affilias, which handles the .INFO domains, has been accused of allowing
fraudulent registrations -- as many as 25% of its registrations
may be fraudulent. Now NeuLevel Inc., the company handling
.biz domains, is mired in controversy for its lottery
registration process and for allowing people to bid on domains
which are not for sale.
Source: MSNBC 9-10-01
- Microsoft Reader Code Broken
A programmer claims to have broken the code for
Microsoft Reader, but has not yet released the decryption
program. Recently an article with a list of the top
ten most hacked authors was published which said
thousands of ebooks are
being illegally traded electronically. However, most of
these illegal copies were made by scanning in print books.
Source: Technology Review 9-10-01
- More Bad Book Publishing News
Book exports declined by 5.6% in the first six months
of 2001. Paperback exports were down 13.7%.
Source: PublishersWeekly 9-10-01
- Search engine company
Fast Search & Transfer ASA has laid off 60 more employees.
Earlier this year the Norwegian company cut 30 employees.
Source: Pandia,
Search Engine Watch 9-10-01
- Hachette Filipacchi Magazines
is planning on cutting 50 of its 1,000 positions because
of the advertising recession. HFM's website is also
currently under re-construction and some of the links are not
working. Elle, Premier, and Car & Driver are some of the
magazines published by Hachette Filipacchi.
Source: New York Daily News 9-7-01
- Red Herring Magazine will become a monthly publication.
Previously, the magazine was published about 22 times per year.
28 jobs out of 170 will also be cut, about 16% of the total workforce.
Source: AdAge.com 9-7-01
- CNET is canceling its News.com television show which
aired on the CNBC network.
Source: Newsbytes 9-7-01
- Belo is dumping its
use of the CueCat
scanning technology it had invested over $37 million in. The CueCat bar codes will
no longer appear in Belo's newspapers. Some of the 10 positions
involving the CueCat project may be cut. In June, 2001
Digital:Convergence Corporation, the company
which developed the CueCat, fired 225 employees -- leaving
only a dozen or so left at the company.
Source: Dallas Morning News 9-7-01
- News Corp. is ceasing publication of Maximum Golf
Magazine. Source: TheDeal.com 9-7-01
- To cut costs Journal Newspapers
will stop publishing Monday editions for six daily newspapers.
Source: The
Washington Post 9-6-01
- The Houston Chronicle
has cut 127 jobs, or 5% of its workforce. 60% of the job
cuts were voluntary employee buyouts.
Source: Houston Chronicle 9-6-01
- Ad Spending Continues to Fall
Advertising spending for all media fell 5.9 percent for the first half of 2001 compared to first-half revenues in 2000, according to the latest figures from CMR, a provider of strategic advertising
and marketing communication information. CMR estimates
that total ad spending for the first half of 2001 came
in at just under $47.5 billion, compared to $50.4 billion
for the same timeframe in 2000.
Source: The Write News 9-5-01
- Vivendi Universal plans to cut 60 positions over the
next few months from Houghton Mifflin, which it acquired in
June, 2001.
Source: PublishersWeekly 9-4-01
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