TIME DROPS BOMB
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THE bloodbath at Time Inc. turned out to be worse than many had anticipated, with the final number of staff cuts swelling to 289 workers and Time, People and Sports Illustrated taking the heaviest hits.
Most of the cutbacks are coming from the editorial side, where the headcount is slated to drop by 172 people, evenly split between 86 voluntary departures and 86 forced layoffs. The business side is losing 117 people.
“It’s like a funeral,” said one editorial insider, who is mulling whether or not to take a buyout package. “I think everyone is too scared to be ticked off or to show they are angry.
“They’ve decimated what was once a respected source of news and other information,” said Newspaper Guild President Barry Lipton, who had just begun negotiations on a new contract with Time Inc. “It’s like Humpty Dumpty, [it] will never be put back together again.”
A somber gloom was the order of the day since the cuts had been widely telegraphed for months.
“Everyone is completely demoralized, and there is no work being done,” added the insider.
Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel didn’t even bother to hold his morning story meeting to plan next week’s issue.
Instead, he addressed the staff and told them the magazine was shutting down bureaus in Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and is looking for 31 volunteers from the ranks of the editorial workers covered by the Newspaper Guild to accept buyout packages.
Overall, the tally is estimated to be around 50 people at Time.
At People, Managing Editor Larry Hackett said the magazine was shutting down bureaus in Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, and was looking for 24 volunteers from the Guild-covered ranks to resign.
A total of 15 reporters will be axed, but the magazine is said to be going to a new regional team approach for story gathering, and is actually adding seven positions.
Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated Managing Editor Terry McDonell said the magazine was looking for 23 editorial people to take voluntary buyouts. On top of that, there will be a smattering of involuntary layoffs from the business and edit side.
Because many of McDonell’s staff worked on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and had taken yesterday off as their midweek break, few could be informed of the layoffs.
The packages are weighted so as to be more attractive to younger shorter-term employees.
The job elimination package includes three weeks’ pay per year of service up to the first $25,000, then two weeks per year until the severance amount reaches $30,000, and then one week pay per year after that.
Guild members who are laid off also receive “notice pay” at the rate of four weeks up for up to one year of service on a graduated scale up to 24 weeks pay for 30 or more years of service.
The number of cuts on the total list had been steadily growing, suggesting Time’s business environment has been under mounting pressure.
In a prepared statement, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief John Huey said: “It’s important that we on the editorial side fully understand what that means and what it doesn’t mean.
“First let, me stress that these layoffs are not about performance of the individuals involved; the layoffs are about restructuring our editorial staffs as we move quickly into a future of flexible, multiplatorm content creation.
“That means redesigning and rethinking much of what we do to ensure we are as efficient as possible. In some cases, that requires reassigning responsibilities among staffers. And unfortunately, in some case that requires a leaner workforce.”
CEO Ann Moore, who apparently discovered the Internet sometime in the past year, continued to preach the new digital bible.
“These layoffs, which are in several business areas and on both the edit and publishing sides of a number of titles, are part of restructuring necessary to sustain our progress,” she said. “You will continue to hear much speculation about our company in the press, so I encourage you to stay focused.”
Fan dance
Sally Koslow, author of “Little Pink Slips,” due out from Penguin’s Putnam imprint in April, professes to have great admiration for Rosie O’Donnell, even though a Rosie-like character named Bebe Blake is fodder for the novel.
Bebe is portrayed as a brash television personality who is put in charge of a venerable women’s magazine.
Koslow, of course was moved aside from her job as editor-in-chief of McCall’s to make way for O’Donnell and the ill-fated Rosie magazine.
Koslow in real life was bounced upstairs, much as the main character Maggie Goldfarb was in the book.
“Bebe’s a Rosie-like character, she’s very savvy and smart about her career and generous but she’s very different in other ways,” said Koslow at a kickoff luncheon yesterday at the Metropolitan.
In the book, Bebe forces the magazine to crash and burn, much as happened to Rosie the magazine. But Koslow professes no animosity toward the real life Rosie.
In fact, she appears quite enamored. “I love her,” she said of the real life Rosie, adding that she “agrees with her on most positions. I really think she’s quite brilliant and I don’t get the sense she looks back.”
Koslow said she is about “90 percent done” with the manuscript for her next book, but promises it won’t be cast in the magazine industry.