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2012-12-08 Home Front: Culture Wars

Guess they couldn't lash the two lifeboats together... Newsweak and the Daily Beast are also going to a metered paywall. Pretty soon you'll have to pay for the privilege of reading Meghan McCain and Andrew Sullivan beat conservatives over the head for being conservative.
It's got to be a sad day at the Newsweek Daily Beast Co., where the layoffs that have been expected since the company announced it would fold the dead-tree edition of Newsweek have begun.

The staff got an email at lunchtime today from editor in chief Tina Brown and CEO Baba Shetty notifying them that editorial staffers would learn if their positions are being eliminated.

The company announced in October that it would take Newsweek digital-only in 2013--it's expected to lose $40 million this year, mostly from the newsmagazine--ending a costly experiment to combine the weekly publication and online upstart into a profitable entity.

Meantime, it's exploring the possibility of moving the Daily Beast to a metered access model, à la The New York Times, Adweek has learned.

Posted by badanov 2012-12-08 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top

#1 Layoffs make sense, given how much redundancy there is at Newsweak. After all, most of their writing and editing is done by the Obama press secretary's office anyway - they just rephrase the talking points and reprint them.

Posted by OldSpook 2012-12-08 00:02|| 2012-12-08 00:02|| Front Page Top

#2 True OS and interns can easily do that edit.

Posted by tipover 2012-12-08 00:44|| 2012-12-08 00:44|| Front Page Top

#3 I'm surprised Newsweak still had 50 employees.

Posted by SteveS 2012-12-08 01:13|| 2012-12-08 01:13|| Front Page Top

#4 Fired from Newsweek. Wear it like the badge of honor it is!

Posted by Besoeker 2012-12-08 06:30|| 2012-12-08 06:30|| Front Page Top

#5 ... somehow I don't think the HR dept at the Peoples Workers Daily will be impressed. Maybe the Pennysaver.

Posted by Procopius2k 2012-12-08 09:11|| 2012-12-08 09:11|| Front Page Top

#6 Now Tina & Baba can get their big bonuses for cutting costs.

Posted by AlanC 2012-12-08 09:42|| 2012-12-08 09:42|| Front Page Top

#7 Just before Christmas, too. Typical of the cold, bourgeois matriarchial corporate power structure!

Posted by Raj 2012-12-08 10:50|| 2012-12-08 10:50|| Front Page Top

#8 Lifeboats? More like rocks; you can tie them together but they still won't float.

Posted by DoDo 2012-12-08 11:04|| 2012-12-08 11:04|| Front Page Top

#9 Who?

Posted by Barbara 2012-12-08 12:07|| 2012-12-08 12:07|| Front Page Top

#10 How long before Tina and Baba Shetty get fired too?

Al

Posted by Frozen Al 2012-12-08 12:52|| 2012-12-08 12:52|| Front Page Top

#11 FORWARD!!!

Posted by tu3031 2012-12-08 13:28|| 2012-12-08 13:28|| Front Page Top

#12 What - they couldn't wait two weeks?

Posted by Pappy 2012-12-08 13:35|| 2012-12-08 13:35|| Front Page Top

#13 Wasn't Baba Shetty a character in one of the Star Wars movies?

Posted by SteveS 2012-12-08 13:37|| 2012-12-08 13:37|| Front Page Top

#14 COMRADE! STOP THE PRESSES!

Posted by Shipman 2012-12-08 18:35|| 2012-12-08 18:35|| Front Page Top

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