Time Inc to shed 500 jobs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/jan/31/time-magazine-downturn

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Time Inc is to cut nearly 500 jobs, about 6% of its 8,000 global staff, said the company's chief executive, Laura Lang, yesterday.

She explained in a memo to staff that "the painful process" was necessary to make the company "leaner, more nimble and more innately multi-platform."

Time Inc, the magazine division of Time Warner, publishes weeklies such as Time, People and Sports Illustrated. Its problems are the same as the rest of the US magazine industry, which has seen a downturn in advertising over several years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine's managing editor, Rick Stengel, also issued a memo calling for six volunteers to accept redundancy. If that number isn't reached by 13 February, he said there would be mandatory lay-offs.

He wrote: "Time Inc is undertaking a company-wide restructuring. As part of this cost-savings initiative, we need to make some cuts in our editorial staff."

Time's historic rival, Newsweek, stopped publishing in print at the end of last year after advertisers and readers had deserted it. Time has maintained high sales - averaging 3,276,822 per issue in the first six months of 2011 - but ad pages have fallen away.

<em>Sources:</em> Wall Street Journal/New York Post