The Daily Mail & Trust cut 47 of the 94 staffers at its Elite Daily site just ahead of the April 17 sale of the millennial women’s destination to Bustle Digital Group, filings by the company with New York regulators reveal.
A Bustle spokesperson acknowledged that it was only taking about half the employees in the unit.
Elite Daily Editor-in-Chief Kaitlyn Cawley is among those spared. She will report to Bustle Editor-in-Chief Kate Ward.
The Daily Mail Online saw a 7 percent drop in its unique visitors and tumbled to third place among digital newspaper sites in the US — behind the New York Times and the Washington Post.
It’s likely to be even lower in the pecking order next month as it will lose the traffic from Elite Daily, which had fallen to only 11.2 million unique visitors in March, according to comScore, down from 28.8 million a year earlier.
DM&T bought Elite Daily from its founders, paying an estimated $26 million in 2015. But late last year, the UK publisher, citing lower revenue and continuing losses at Elite Daily, took a $31 million write-down against the asset.
Bustle Digital CEO Bryan Goldberg, who in an earlier incarnation was a co-founder of Bleacher Report, said he hopes it can offer the Elite Daily a better home with his other female-focused sites.
“Elite Daily’s audience and editorial strategy will remain largely intact,” said Goldberg, who says that, with Bustle and Romper, he now reaches 80 million women.
“The sales and business strategy will be entirely rebuilt from the ground up, with a focus on native advertising, creative service and leveraging Bustle’s existing client service infrastructure,” he said.