Sports Illustrated is beefing up its investigative team after cutting its staff by 8 percent just two weeks ago.
Peter Thamel, a college sports reporter for the New York Times, and Thayer Evans, who has been with Fox Sports for the past two years, will reunite as part of a new enterprise team for SI.
The duo wrote groundbreaking pieces for the Times on college-sports abuses and high-school diploma mills.
The move by SI chief Terry McDonell to shore up the mag’s writing talent follows a number of defections in recent years.
Elsewhere, Paul Fichtenbaum, who was designated by McDonell to lead what he called the “long-overdue integration of print and digital,” is wasting no time. He just moved from his office on the 32nd floor to a bigger office on the 31st floor, where most of the print writers and McDonell himself sit.
Fichtenbaum, managing editor of SI.com, was handed the new role after McDonell announced that he was done with layoffs. The cuts included 13 voluntary buyouts and three pink slips for the 210-person staff.
Eventually, McDonell and Fichtenbaum plan to end the division between print and digital as they try to counter the far-reaching clout of rival ESPN.
Daily layoffs
The Daily, the News Corp.-owned newspaper designed for the iPad, is cutting 50 full-time employees, or 29 percent of its staff.
In other changes, the opinion section will be eliminated, and the sports section will use material supplied by “content partners,” including Fox Sports.
The Daily was launched at a splashy press conference with Apple 18 months ago. At the time, News Corp. execs said the digital publication could make a profit if it reached 300,000 subscribers; it currently has around 100,000.
“These are important changes that will allow The Daily to be more nimble editorially and to focus on the elements that our readers have told us through their consumption that they like and want,” said Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo.
“Unfortunately, these changes have forced us to make difficult decisions and to say goodbye to some colleagues who have worked hard to make The Daily successful.” News Corp. also owns The Post.
Goodstein news
A chain of downtown Manhattan weeklies owned by Community Media LLC, including The Villager, Downtown Express and Gay City News, has been sold.
The buyer is Jennifer Goodstein, a former MetLife digital executive and the wife of News Corp. Senior Vice President Les Goodstein, who is a former president of the New York Daily News. The new company will be known as NYC Community Media.
The weekly papers — with a mostly free circulation of around 60,000 — bring in about $2.4 million in annual revenue. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Goodstein said the papers were profitable, and she has no plans to shut them or make them digital-only.
“They will absolutely stay in print,” she vowed, but added that she hopes to improve their digital offerings. “I don’t have journalism experience; my role at MetLife was managing their portals and developing content for them.”
Goodstein becomes the 10th owner of the papers, which began with a single title during the Great Depression in 1933. The Villager, the only paid-circulation title in the group, is the oldest of the papers and has won the New York Press Association’s best weekly newspaper award three times in the last 11 years.
“I said I’d do this for five years when I bought these papers in 1999, and I did it for 13 years,” said Editor and Publisher John Sutter. “It was a great run for me, and I loved every moment of it.”
During his tenure, he started three other papers: Gay City News in 2002, Chelsea Now in 2006 and The East Villager in 2010.
“It’s a great population to write for,” said Sutter. “They’re contentious, fractious, politically savvy and sophisticated.”
Tom Allon, CEO of Manhattan Media, which competes in some neighborhoods, had nothing but praise for his rivals: “They’re great newspapers, and anyone who wants to invest in newspapers is good in my book.”
He said in 2000, there were more than 700 weekly papers in New York state; today, there are more than 900. “While other newspapers have been contracting, weekly newspapers have been expanding,” said Allon.
Spin city
BuzzMedia, which took over music magazine Spin from McEvoy Group three weeks ago, has laid off 11 people, including Editor-in-Chief Steve Kandell and Managing Editor Catherine Davis, and canceled the November/December issue.
In a statement, the new owners said that over the next year, they planned to double the size of the remaining 25-person staff under Editorial Director Charles Aaron.
But that has not stopped speculation that the print version has disappeared for good.
“BuzzMedia is still determining exactly how print fits in with Spin’s multiple distribution points and growth initiatives,” said a spokeswoman.