Desperation: Time Magazine Slashes 22 Departments!

For years corporate media publications have been losing their strangehold on the information industry.

Time magazine is no exception.

Today it was announed Time is cutting 22 jobs across numerous departments including editorial, technology, sales & marketing and Time Studios.

In a memo to staff, Time magazine CEO Jess Sibley announces that the company is laying off 22 staff. Says the business is still struggling due to decreased ad budgets, drastic shifts in consumer behavior, changes to search and social algorithms, and overall economic uncertainty. pic.twitter.com/hNHPeiRffo

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) August 20, 2024

Here’s the full memo:

New York Post reports:

Time is slashing 22 jobs as the volatile media environment continues to squeeze the iconic magazine.

Time chief executive office Jessica Sibley said Tuesday that the company is slashing roles across several departments including editorial, technology, sales & marketing and Time Studios.

In a memo obtained by The Post, Sibley told staffers: “It is incredibly hard to say goodbye to our talented colleagues; we are deeply grateful for their contributions to Time’s culture, mission and legacy, and we will closely support them through this period of transition.”

The CEO said the decision was made so that the company can build a “sustainable” future due to headwinds facing the industry and economic uncertainty.

She cited “significant challenges” like “heightened competition for decreased advertising budgets,” as well as “drastic” shifts in consumer behavior, and changes to search and social algorithms that have depresssed web traffic at news sites.

Ah, the decision was made so that the company (TIME) “can build a sustainable future due to headwinds facing the industry and economic uncertainty.”

Or to translate from Sibley’s corporate-speak: our revenue is way down and we need to fire a bunch of people to keep from going out of business.

But it’s not like Time’s financial struggles are a shock. Back in January of this year, The New York Times reported on the failures of billionaire owned publications (Time magazine, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times):

But it increasingly appears that the billionaires are struggling just like nearly everyone else. Time, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all lost millions of dollars last year, people with knowledge of the companies’ finances have said, after considerable investment from their owners and intensive efforts to drum up new revenue streams.

“Wealth doesn’t insulate an owner from the serious challenges plaguing many media companies, and it turns out being a billionaire isn’t a predictor for solving those problems,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. “We’ve seen a lot of naïve hope attached to these owners, often from employees.”

Time is facing similar headwinds. The publication lost around $20 million in 2023, according to two people with knowledge of the publication’s financial picture. Time has weighed cutting costs in the first quarter of the year to help offset some of the losses, one of the people said.

Yes, it’s sad to see so many lose their jobs.

But one of the best things to happen to American society in recent years is the rise of independent media.

Afterall, why should corporations and billionaires be controlling what news we see, read, and hear?