Time Inc. To Lay Off 600 Employees, Organize Titles Into Three Divisions

Time Inc., the world's largest magazine company, is set to announce a revamping that will result in job cuts of 6 percent -- more than 600 positions -- and a reorganization that could radically alter the culture at the venerable publishing house.

The company plans to reveal the overhaul in a memorandum Tuesday evening from Ann S. Moore, Time Inc.'s chairman and chief executive, and the layoffs will begin in about two weeks.

No magazines are scheduled to close, but some are likely to be severely cut back. Ms. Moore was already planning an overhaul because of the upheavals in print media, but she was forced to speed up those efforts amid the financial crisis and looming recession.

Time Inc.'s 24 magazines in the United States and their Web sites will be organized into three divisions: news, which will include Fortune, Money, Time and Sports Illustrated; lifestyle titles, which include Real Simple, Cottage Living, Coastal Living and Southern Living, among others; and style and entertainment, which includes People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly, which has suffered a severe downturn and is likely to be whittled down under the new structure.

Heads of the news and entertainment units will continue to report to John Huey, the editor in chief of Time Inc. The lifestyle unit, which may be run by Bill Shapiro, who has been development editor, will report to the business side of the company. Martha Nelson, who is editor of the People Group, will head the entertainment division.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Opt1musPr1me]

Time Inc shouldn't only be shedding staff, they need to be shedding products as well. Time Inc is part of Time Warner which is stuck in the "Bigger is better" era. They need to realize that BIG is out and small and nimble is in. Time Inc is just too big for no reason at all.

[HARVIN]

Time, Inc.could up and disappear tomorrow and in a month no one would remember there ever was a Time Magazine.

[Herkybird]

Whoa whoa whoa....you mean yew wanna lay off Howard Feinman?? He is one of Keith O's best buds! Esp Since Dana Milbank jumped ship!

[NPA]

Yet another business laying off workers. Businesses don't keep workers employeed based on how much they pay in taxes (McCain supporters). Businesses need paying customers, when the middle class (which makes up 90% of the population) has money to spend for products and services the country does well. Economics 101.

[Bitsko]

Perhaps more people would buy their magazines if they published something besides celebrity puff pieces and hoaxes about jesus' brother.

[CricketsMom]

Hmmmm. A little backlash against the MSM? Gee, that' a novel thought. I wonder why?

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6099188&page=1

[lmt27]

Maybe if they stop paying these celebrities millions of dollars for baby photos they wouldn't be in this situation. I never understood why they did that; it doesn't make me buy the magazine.

[dharmawire]

Why isn't HuffPost carrying the Gannett layoff story -- slashing some 3,000 jobs? Just asking.

[topkatnc]

Like I have said before " ain't nothing going to get better with them until it gets better for us "

[isis]

And let's be honest. The pressures to be fair and balanced by reporting the other side of issues such as global warming has made all publications that do this less of an authority figure and more of just a gossip page. Just because the conservatives have set up all of these "educational" foundations doesn't mean you shouldn't fact check their claims. My local news just runs their stuff verbatim. One time they attributed a quote from a Harvard president to Ronald Reagan. They cherry picked a science article to the point where they came to the opposite position on off shore drilling than the scientific authors. The GOP foundations are terrible and until the press gets more careful about these groups they will get dragged down by them.

[isis]

I love magazines! I read about how they were trying to manipulate the postal rates to get better rates at the expense of smaller magazine. This made me drop Sports Illustrated because why would I support a group that was raising my rates for things like Mother Jones and Rolling Stone and Old House Journal?

[fiduciaryatlarge]

Who reads any Time publication? Like I said on another thread, I don't trust them. If they do get something right you could have read it in other sources, to rely on these people opens you up to misinformation.

It stinks these people are losing their jobs.

[nogimmicks]

Why not print more dollars and give the money to the Time spinsters. Just to thank them for helping to start the wars. That is exactly what Bernanke/Paulson's Fed is doing to further increase the relative wealth of the banker scumbags who brought us this crisis.

[Meggie]

Time lost me when they seemed to go from a news and information magazine to a religious rag a few years back.

[javagirl322]

Yep, me too and when they started to hire people from the Bush administration--I cancelled my subscription and never looked back!!!

[rock2casbah]

Well they are about to get another blow because I am about to cancel my Time subscription. I don't know how to tell them how sick I am of Halperin's comic book simple The Page section and all the other NOTHING "journalists" they have. Without Joe Kleinm why was I reading it anyway?

They were spinning so hard for McCain until it dawned on them he was losing about last week or so. Now after the race is almost over they decide to go fair with Obama, well kind of. Too late, Please await my cancellation.

[ckinsobe]

I had not been getting Time for some time and just re subscribed and I have been appalled at the terrible decline in quality. The magazine is flimsily thin, full of stupid little "cutesy" charts that are totally uninteresting and often half the magazine consist of page after page of medical ads.

It used to be a pretty substantial read, now I blow through it in no time and am strangely unsatisfied at the end of it.

I will not renew the subscription after it is done...

[isis]

I agree. I can hardly follow those cutesy charts or tell fact from fiction in their jokes. Reading Chrales Krauthammer is painful and they have very few female writers although I must say they are trying. Rolling Stone has better election coverage.

[toocoldout]

Time magazine is an American icon. It's the most influential magazine in the world.

[rock2casbah]

I don't know why? I get it and it is a waste of over 100 hard earned bucks.

[Norak]

I gave up Time for Newsweek long ago and like their slant. Always a good read with gravitas and often a sense of humor.