Crap
Two related pieces of bad news:
Conde Nast has laid off dozens of people today from CondeNet, the company’s internet division. We hear from one source that 60 people were let go this morning, most in tech, some in marketing. We also hear that an additional 20 staffers were fired from “Conde Connect,” the company’s internal intranet division. Conde itself hasn’t released specific numbers, but these are part of the 5% across-the-board cuts the company ordered two weeks ago.
And:
Digital dealmaker and a dozen others out at Wired:
A quarter of the 50-something employees in Wired.com’s San Francisco newsroom are gone, a source tells us — and with them, the bubbly delusion that Wired would not just report on the transformation of media by technology, but be a part of the revolution as well. The cuts hit Wired’s tech team heavily, though some writers and editors also got pink slips. (CNET reports that 3 out of 28 editorial staffers are gone, but a Wired insider says that the actual number of edit jobs cut is at least six.)
I’ve been pretty apathetic about most the announced cuts in the journalism industry, but it sucks when a company you admire has to go through it. Plus I guess many of us probably hoped that Wired was a publication that had “figured it out” and may lead the way to journalism’s salvation.
