Comments on: Time Inc. Fires 289

By: Kent G. Budge

Kent G. Budge — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:34:20 +0000

I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised about the cuts at People. Its patrons read it to be titillated without the social stigma of being seen with Playboy (or whatever its female-audience equivalent is.) Nowadays you can do that much more efficiently and privately with an Internet browser.

By: TAM Money and Finance » Time Inc. Drops the Axe on Almost 300

TAM Money and Finance » Time Inc. Drops the Axe on Almost 300 — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 02:59:31 +0000

[...] UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis, founder of Entertainment Weekly notes the Time Inc. approach is massively inefficient in our day and age [via OTB]: Mind you, once reported by a cadre of correspondents and written by a staff writer in New York, it was edited (read: rewritten) by a senior editor and edited (yes, rewritten), by an assistant managing editor, and then edited (and, with surprising freqency, rewritten) by the managing editor. And then the research came along to try to correct all the errors this process inserted in the story. [...]

By: Rodney Dill

Rodney Dill — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:04:51 +0000

The other reason for quick staff cuts is to send a message to shareholders that costs are undercontrol. You can always start hiring immediately after such cuts, and some companies as a practice do so.

By: Herb

Herb — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:52:23 +0000

It is so good to see that the "left Wing, Liberal" media is suffering from their bias and anti Bush rhetoric they have espoused for far to long.

Whats even worse is that their fellow left wingers are "Not" supporting their many anti American positions.

To Bad the NYT is not in trail.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:43:45 +0000

I think there's some sense in what you're saying, YAJ. One of my barometers for detecting when an industry is in for change is when you hear a certain number of “our…are the best in the world”.

We heard quite a bit of that in the 1960's and early 1970's in response to the influx of first German (the VW) and then Japanese automobiles. “American cars are the best in the world!”

And that, essentially, is what the press is saying in response to the challenges that blogs and bloggers pose for them. It's also what's being said about our healthcare system.

By: Rodney Dill

Rodney Dill — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:42:57 +0000

Read that:
Time Magazine fires the 2006 Person of The Year --
289 times over.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:23:38 +0000

I am struck by the comparison of the MSM process and the continual job improvement process (good example is Japanese automotive manufacture). In continual job improvement, you get the people doing the jobs to propose ways to do the job better. You test out the changes and get the system stable with a higher productivity. Then you spin and do it again. The job takes 10 people?, then lets try it with 9 and see how the tasks get split up. Rather than having a quality inspector at the end of the line, make each employee their own quality inspector. The worker know if things aren't working right. And if the worker knows but doesn't care, no number of quality inspectors is going to reduce your scrap.

Sorry, all the signs point to as major of shake up for the MSM as the big three auto companies had in the 70's/80's.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:40:03 +0000

Maybe they can do a Sullivan-like pledge drive and claim the money is needed for paper costs. heh.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:28:03 +0000

As I noted in a post about my dad's tenure as editorial page editor of the long-defunct St. Louis Star-Times, it wasn't all that long ago that most jobs in journalism paid little if anything at all. The move towards professionalism and the rise of the J schools over the last generation or so hasn't had the desired effect of limiting entry (and, consequently, making larger salaries economicly sustainable). Advertising and the dissemination of information, generally, isn't like the practice of medicine.