Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Actually Some Newsweek Employees Will Be Fired

Newsweek cheers the firing of teachers, so I can't say I am sad to sad to see Newsweek employees feeling anxious about their jobs:

Sidney Harman may have been picked because he wanted to keep more of Newsweek's roughly 350 staff members than the other suitors did, but that doesn't mean all jobs are safe.

Business Insider's Joe Pompeo talked to some Newsweek staffers soon after the deal was announced:

The tone inside the newsroom, meanwhile, is a mix of relief and anxiety. Harman is seen as a more suitable owner than other finalists, like the hedge fund Avenue Capital, which was knocked out of the running because of its stake in National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. (AMI), and Fred Drasner, who was reportedly uninterested in "maintaining a huge editorial infrastructure."

But the uncertainty lingers.

"There's a little bit of a sense of relief, but now people have to wait another three to six weeks to know if they'll be offered a job with the new employer, and even longer to find out who the new editor will be," one insider said.

"The notion that lots of people are going to stay is a bit misleading," said another. "More people who currently work at Newsweek will have jobs in this scenario than in the AMI scenario, but I don't think there's a huge collective sigh of relief."

Frankly I think they should ALL be fired.

Newsweek is losing $45 million this year alone.

It has lost money every year since 2007.

It is an absolutely unreadable publication (other than Isikoff) that parrots Village culture and points of view with little to help it stand out from other Village entities.

It isn't going to turnaround under Harmon any more than it did under Kaplan Test Prep.

Time to pull the plug and send Jonathan Alter, Evan Thomas and all the other ed deformers to the unemployment line.

Or maybe the rubber room for journalists.
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4 comments:

  1. Newsweek is actually unreadable. The writing and topics are awful..and of course out of date by the time they hit the newstand.
    It is hopelessly liberal and often desperately so: 'Palin in Shorts' was a new low in journalistic sales desperation.
    My advice to ownership: Kill it now because the slow, painful, and self indulgent death of a newsweekly is and will be a pathetic spectacle.
    Is it just me or does everyone but the staff at Newsweek know that liberal newsweeklies are dinosaurs?

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  2. I don't really view Newsweek as "liberal". I see it more as squarely being in the conventional center-right ideology that so many in the Village subscribe to.

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  3. Did you say Newsweek is Center-Right? Is that a typo? Since they are anti gun, pro choice, pro gay rights, pro Obamacare, pro big government, pro Democrat, anti death penalty, pro Obama, anti Bush, anti Palin, anti Reagan (!), pro affirmative action, global warming mongers, etc etc I think you must be kidding.
    Unless you mean in the economic sense in that they are a (failing) capitalist organization and anti union. I guess in that narrrow sense they might be considered center-right. I believe they are firmly on the left in every single social issue I can think of. As a matter of fact all of the prominant writers are unabashed liberals.
    I once heard the New York Times described as center right on TV and after all the hosts (I think it was CNN) got off the floor the otherwise common sense commentator explained he meant in the narrow capitalist anti union sense. Not in the conventional sense. I guess that is what you mean.

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