Layoffs hit The Washington Post after BusinessWeek, AP
Several media reporters wrote on Twitter on Thursday that this was one of the worst weeks in journalism, and it’s hard to argue with them. BusinessWeek is canning a third of its staff as Bloomberg gets ready to buy the magazine. The Associated Press is laying off 90 people as part of its effort to cut payroll costs by 10 percent this year.
And now The Washington Post is laying off staff, sources told me on Friday, and a spokeswoman confirmed.
The Post has cut an unknown number of washingtonpost.com workers, the website folks who until now have worked separately at the dot-com headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the Post’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. One source told me up to 10 are going. That’s not as big a number as other places you’ve read about lately, but it’s still a painful cut. (Disclosure: I worked for The Washington Post Co. from 1998 to 2005)
Sources shared several names with me, but until those people confirm that they were laid off, I don’t want to publish them. What I can say is that there were several journalists and marketing people among the casualties. They are getting severance packages, but they are accompanied by non-disclosure agreements which prevent them from discussing their firings. Apparently, some of my sources said, they will be out of work by Dec. 31.
Why is this happening? Here’s what spokeswoman Kris Coratti said:
As part of the work we’re doing to turn around the business that supports our journalism, there were a small number of individual positions eliminated as a result of efficiencies we have found through our new structure and through new technology, and those have taken place in both print and online.
The background: The Post’s web staff, as I mentioned, is joining the main newsroom as they eliminate the gap that the paper set up many years ago by making its website a separate operation. The company, all my sources tell me, want to cut staff before the end of the year because next year the remainder would become unionized. Web staff are not unionized now. That, my sources say, would make it much more difficult for the money-losing Washington Post to cut costs by laying off people because they would be protected to some extent by their contract.
Talking with Thomson Reuters chief about print
Covering Thomson Reuters Corp for almost two years has taught me that people like to cast my company in a recurring role in media deal parlor games. Now that the company’s arch-rival Bloomberg LP will buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill, lots of my pals in the media world are wondering: Will Thomson Reuters buy a mainstream news or business news magazine? Or newspaper? Why not Forbes? Why not the Financial Times?
Keep in mind that Thomson Reuters likes to remind people when they ask these questions that Thomson Corp, before buying Reuters, got out of its Canadian newspaper empire for a reason. (See below)
I asked our chief executive, Tom Glocer, a question along these lines on a Thursday phone call he had with reporters to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results.
Here is what he said:
Thomson did a remarkable job, far earlier than any other company I know, of seeing what was coming and transitioning their business out of print for the most part… I don’t see any particular time or reason at this juncture why we should go the other way.
Later on Thursday, when I interviewed Glocer, we returned to this theme. (I can’t help it, I’m a print guy.) I used the Financial Times, owned by Pearson Plc and beloved of its CEO, Dame Marjorie Scardino, as a sample target:
Here is Glocer’s reply:
SC NJ: Thanks for reading – and commenting. I did not include a quote from Glocer where he referred to PDR and similar properties. That said, I asked him about mainstream news and business newspapers and magazines, so that’s the context in which he answered the question. I don’t think you caught him out.
Robert
BusinessWeek, where the action happens off-screen
McGraw-Hill set Tuesday as the due date for bids for the ailing BusinessWeek magazine, and at least as of 7:30 pm eastern time, nothing at all has happened. Since this is one of those stories where I’ve encountered absolutely no fruitful sources, I’ve relied on reading the reports of other people.
So what’s going to happen to the business news weekly? Let’s catch up with the latest:
It will not go to Lazard chief Bruce Wasserstein. The owner of New York magazine has enough to deal with in the slumping publishing world already, so he’s gone, reports BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine.
Fine himself is bowing out of the action after presenting us with most of it. He and wife Laurel Touby (a media maven in her own right) are taking a six-month sabbatical to do more fun things in other parts of the world.
Bloomberg LP remains interested, along with various other bidders, say various media reports. As you might expect, no one there is talking to us evil arch-rivals at Reuters. I hear from Bloomberg journalists that no one there is talking to them either. Too bad, because it was Bloomberg journalist Greg Bensinger who helped break the story. (And so much the worse, as Bensinger is on honeymoon at the moment.)
No matter who buys it up, New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford tells us, via a memo she obtained, that Evercore — the banker group shopping BusinessWeek — is promising 20 percent layoffs across the board, including 55 of 217 journalists. 25 percent. Ouch!
The one bit of original reporting that I can offer you comes from the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference that I attended on Tuesday. I asked McGraw CEO Terry McGraw if keeping the magazine and scrapping the whole sale process is a possibility. His answer: “At this point all options are open.” He also said that this is a time for BusinessWeek to explore all options, such as going online only, or any other number of alternatives. They don’t all necessarily include selling the magazine.
Monday media highlights
Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:
Microsoft takes on Google as Office moves to Web (Reuters) Jim Finkle reports: “Microsoft will offer for free to consumers Web-based versions of its Office suite of programs, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program. Microsoft will also host one Internet business version of Office at its own data centers, charging companies a yet-to- be-announced fee.”
Six in 10 companies plan to skip Windows 7 (Reuters) “Many of the more than 1,000 companies that responded to a survey by ScriptLogic Corp say they have economized by cutting back on software updates and lack the resources to deploy Microsoft’s latest offering.”
MySpace to Take Entertainment Tack (WSJ) “In a brief interview, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said MySpace needs to be refocused ‘as an entertainment portal.’ Mr. Murdoch described his vision for MySpace as a place where ‘people are looking for common interests,’” writes Julia Angwin.
15-Year Old Analyst Trashes TV, Newspapers, Radio, And…Twitter (Business Insider) “A 15 year-old working in Morgan Stanley’s London office has written what may be the firm’s most popular research report in years,” writes Henry Blodget. “In it, he explains that none of his friends read newspapers and few watch TV. He also, interestingly, says none of them use Twitter, because no one reads the tweets texting costs money.”
McGraw-Hill trying to sell BusinessWeek (Reuters) Jui Chakravorty Das and Robert MacMillan report: “McGraw-Hill Cos Inc is trying to sell BusinessWeek magazine, a source told Reuters on Monday, at a time when media advertising sales are slumping and would-be buyers for newspapers and magazines are scarce. McGraw hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to manage the sale, said the source, who was familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.”
In other news:
Whither Windows 7 and its (expected) wake?
A lot may be riding on the release of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, which is due in October, not the least of which is an expected rush of advertising to support everything from the software itself, to the computers it will run on to the rival computers it will not run on.
This surge of business is seen coming just as the holiday shopping session gets under way and could help spark the economic turnaround that some suggest will come later this year.
Or maybe not.
According to a survey by ScriptLogic, six in 10 companies plan to skip buying Windows 7. Some will pass on the added cost of the upgrade, while others are concerned about compatibility with existing applications.
Perhaps consumers will be less squemish about Windows 7 than businesses. Then again, neither were exactly thrilled about Microsoft’s last upgrade — Windows Vista….
Keep an eye on:
- McGraw-Hill hires Evercore as bankers in effort sell BusinessWeek (Bloomberg)
- Pandora gets financing (TechCrunch)
- Microsoft’s Bing – so far so good, trafficwise (New York Times)
Yes, Vista sucked, most Windows O/S’s have sucked. But, even though there are much more stable O/S’s out there such as Fedora you are missing the most important factor.
Most people im sure that buy windows are gamers. Very few main release games will run on anything but Windows. So I dont think they will go the same way as Chrysler. There are too many gamers in the world that need this O/S to feed thier habit.
Unless of course all the PC gamers move over to consoles….BWahahahahahahahah, sorry lost my mind for a second there.
This place is an absolute joke. The paper is dying, not slowly but fast and it’s all of the Senior managements fault. The worst generation of the Graham family.