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Gannett, BuzzFeed and Verizon Media Group are all shedding employees. Gannett’s cuts will affect up to 400 employees at such papers as the Indianapolis Star, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tennessean and Arizona Republic, according to a report in the New York Post. The moves follow an unsolicited bid by Digital First Media, also known as MNG Enterprises, to buy Gannett for $1.36 billion. BuzzFeed is laying off 15 percent of its workforce, about 215 people out of a staff of 1450. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti sent out a memo on Jan. 23 in which he said that efforts to diversify the company’s revenue weren't enough to help it achieve profitability. “The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our destiny, without ever need to raise funding again,” he wrote. Verizon Media Group, which owns brands that include TechCrunch, HuffPost and Tumblr, will lay off around 800, or about 7 percent of its employees. Last month, Verizon took a $4.6 billion write-down on the unit, which was formerly called Oath. Third-quarter revenues were $1.8 billion, a drop of close to 7 percent from Q3 2017. The company says it expects the unit's revenue will remain flat, and that a previous target of $10 billion in revenue by 2020 will not be met.
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Hearst says that it racked up record profits for the eighth straight year in 2018, but it attributes one-third of those profits to its flourishing Business Media operations, particularly financial and data company Fitch Group. Hearst president and CEO Steven Swartz says that in 2019 the company expects the Business Media group to account for close to 40 percent of its profits. Swartz wrote in a memo that the Business Media assets “spring from our legacy of publishing trade magazines, have strong and stable management teams, are 100 percent digital in their delivery and are subscription-based.” However, despite the growth of the Business Media group, he said Hearst “still gets the majority of its profits from the consumer media space,” and that “our newspaper and magazine companies continue to be solidly profitable.”
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Coca-Cola has called a timeout on advertising during Super Bowl LIII. After advertising during the big game for the past 11 years, the company is limiting its presence this year to a 60-second spot that addresses themes of diversity and inclusion, airing just before kickoff. While CBS is charging between $5.1 million to $5.3 million for commercial packages that run during the game, ads that run pre-game cost considerably less, with a price tag that Variety reports is “from hundreds of thousands of dollars to a few million.” Pepsi is taking a different strategy. In addition to sponsoring the halftime show, which will feature Maroon 5, along with rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi, Pepsi is running ads during the game for several of its beverages. Those ads will feature such performers as Cardi B, Steve Carell and Michael Buble. Pepsi has also blanketed Atlanta, where the game will be played, with a series of billboards. Atlanta also happens to be Coca-Cola’s home town.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
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.
