Terry McDonell — who handed off his Sports Illustrated duties in October with the idea of becoming an adviser to Time Inc. on digital projects — will exit altogether at year end.
He will follow his boss, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief John Huey, who is also readying for retirement before the year is out. Huey hired McDonell from Us Weekly in 2002.
The twin departures come as rumblings of a new round of deep cuts grow louder. One insider said signs point to a pink-slip flurry in mid-January.
There was talk that McDonell would become a digital editorial adviser to CEO Laura Lang because he had done some of Time Inc.’s earliest work on developing tablet applications. But with cutback talk in the air again, McDonell reversed course.
“My contract is just about finished, and SI’s in great shape,” he said.
McDonell said he is going to hang out his own shingle as McDonell Co., offering up his expertise to outside firms working on joint ventures across multiple platforms, including publishing, video and film.
He said he will work closely with the Wonder Factory, which helped design the first Sports Illustrated tablet app, and said he plans to create publishing, video and film joint ventures across multiple platforms.
“I want to use all the tools, maybe even create some interesting new ones,” McDonell said. “And I love the idea of important diversions.”
About time
Editors and reporters at Bloomberg LP might find it a little easier to grab a lunch or drinks outside the office with sources now that “Big Brother” is no longer watching.
The reviled time stamp on e-mails, telling one and all when employees swiped in or out, was gone as of Monday.
“It was way overdue,” said one insider of the stamp disappearance.
Ever since Mike Bloomberg launched the data and financial media giant, it has kept strict tabs on when reporters were busy at their desks by stamping the time and their status on all e-mails sent by reporters and salespeople.
“It was way too intrusive,” said one insider. “If I needed to squeeze in a doctor’s appointment and came in at an unheard of time like 9:45 a.m., that would show up on every e-mail I sent to anyone internally.”
The same thing happened if you left for an after-work drink with a source. “It would make it look like you left early.”
While the BlackBerry and smartphones made virtually everyone into a self-contained mobile office, Bloomberg still kept the time stamp. “It made you feel like you constantly had to get back to the office even when you were out doing your job.”
Still, the stamp’s disappearance was greeted a little suspiciously by some, according to the company’s own memo to employees.
“Many cheered,” according to the memo. “Others thought it was broken. Some wanted it back. A few suspicious types assumed they couldn’t see it, but their manager could. (They can’t.)
“So what actually happened?”
As professional development director Melinda Wolfe explained in the memo, “Removing the time stamp is a signal that we want employes to focus on their work rather than the amount of time they spend at work. When you think about our Bloomberg culture expectations — working hard, moving fast, acting boldly — watching the clock just isn’t part of our DNA.”
Present tense
Some McGraw-Hill insiders are understandably nervous after Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management agreed to buy the company’s educational-publishing division for $2.5 billion.
The deal is expected to be finalized by the end of this year or early next. When that happens, McGraw-Hill Cos., headed by Harold W. “Terry” McGraw III, will become McGraw-Hill Financial, a “high-growth, high-margin benchmarks, content and analytics company in the global capital and commodities markets,” according to a statement.
The newly slimmed-down company will still include in its tent Standard & Poor’s and J. D. Powers.
The company, once the dominant business-magazine publisher in the US, sold off BusinessWeek to Bloomberg two years ago but still has a handful of trade publications including Architectural Record, Engineering News Record and Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Although they seem like an odd fit, a company spokeswoman insisted there are no divestment plans afoot.
The company last year sold its nine TV stations to E.W. Scripps for $212 million.
The company, which had been under pressure from activist investors to sell the textbooks division, had originally hoped to get $3 billion to $4 billion when it announced its divestment plan in back in September of 2011.
The company said it expects to use about $1.9 million for a stock repurchase and “to make selective tuck-in acquisitions.”
McGraw-Hill stock inched up on Monday when the deal was unveiled, to $51.89 (from the opening week price of $51.37) but fell back to close at $51.77 yesterday.