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Snap Inc., the parent company of image-messaging service Snapchat, has shed around two dozen employees in its New York and London offices, according to CNBC. The layoffs included several members of the company’s content team, which curates both feeds for user-generated Snaps, known as Our Stories, and the publisher-initiated Discover channels. Snapchat has had a hard time keeping up with its larger rival, Facebook-owned Instagram, as it has copied several Snapchat features. While Snapchat reported 178 million daily active users in November, Facebook’s global head of sales Carolyn Everson says that Instagram Stories is reaching 250 million daily active users. Snap lost nearly $179 million during the third quarter of 2017. The new layoffs come after Snap cut the size of the team that produces Spectacles, its sunglasses that can be used to record images, and dropped close to 20 jobs from its recruiting team as part of plans to slow hiring this year.
 David Shipley |
Bloomberg is shutting down its financial commentary brand Gadfly in an effort to place all the opinion offerings of its news service under one umbrella. Launched in 2015, Gadfly, designed as an extension of the Bloomberg View opinion column, aimed to offer fast analysis of financial, corporate and technology news. Gadfly content can be accessed on Bloomberg terminals or at bloomberg.com. “We’re simply combining our various opinion brands into a unified global platform, Bloomberg Opinion,” Bloomberg commentary editor David Shipley told the Wall Street Journal. “Labels may change, but the jobs, journalism and goals remain the same.”
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Bonnier, the Swedish publisher behind such titles as Field & Stream and Popular Science, is turning five of its magazines into digital-only brands. It has also laid off the editor-in-chief, creative director and photo editor of food and travel focused Saveur, which will go from six issues a year to four. The magazine will now share resources with other publications in a fashion similar to that used by Conde Nast and other major publishing houses. About 70 employees in all are set to lose their jobs due to the changes. The titles that will be no longer be produced in print are WaterSki, Wakeboarding, SportDiver, Baggers and Dirt Rider.
 Natasha Bertrand |
The Atlantic has hired Natasha Bertrand, currently a political correspondent for Business Insider, as a staff writer for its Politics & Policy team, covering national security and the intelligence community with a focus on developments in the Trump-Russia investigation. The magazine has also brought on James Somers as a contributing editor, writing about technology, data and computing. Last week, the publisher announced that Elaina Plott and Reihan Salam will join as politics staff writer and contributing editor, respectively. Readership of TheAtlantic.com grew nearly 30% in 2017, and the print magazine now has more than 570,000 subscribers.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
