It was only two years ago when AOL was being looked at as a savior of the news industry, snapping up journalists by the dozens, many of whom had been downsized by newspapers and other “old” media.
Yesterday, the rumors circulating ever since the company’s plan to buy the Huffington Post for $315 million was revealed came true and a massive downsizing took place — 900 people were laid off worldwide, including 200 in the media and tech group in the US. Some 700 in India got the ax.
That amounts to 22 percent of its global workforce of 4,000.
While the company insists that none of the AOL Daily Finance, Politics Daily, Popeater.com, Stylist.com and Walletpop.com brands will be going away, insiders said most of the sites have been gutted.
Jonathan Dube, senior vice president and general manager of AOL News & Information, tweeted around noon: “I have just laid off dozens of the most talented journalists & product folks I know. Need talent? Let me know!”
Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, will head the AOL news operation that will be merged with her business and re-christened Huffington Media Group.
“We have a clear path to brand success — which is only turbo-charged with the addition of the Huffington Post to our brand portfolio,” CEO Tim Armstrong said in the internal memo announcing the cutbacks.
One blogger called AOL “the sick old man of the Internet.” Although rumored for weeks, the sheer size of the layoffs still stunned many insiders. “I called one of my editors because I was out working on a story and I was told that there was a blood bath over there,” said one newly out-of-work writer early yesterday morning.
In his internal announcement, Armstong called an all hands meeting for the survivors at 5 p.m. last night. Said one insider, “My all hands meeting will be a car service coming to take my boxes away.”
Others wondered if the latest move will be a right-sizing that puts the company back on the right track — a track that it has fallen from repeatedly in recent years.
Re-Wired
Sharp media observers could not help but notice that the Wired cover on Chinese electronics maker Foxconn looked remarkably similar to a cover that Bloomberg Businessweek ran last September. Both had stories on the same sprawling company where hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers make everything from iPhones to Sony PlayStations and Dell computers while living and working onsite. The company has attracted negative attention because 17 workers have committed suicide in recent years. The BBW cover shot was of the inside of a factory floor with a center aisle and workers toiling away.
Wired ran a remarkably similarly themed story and photo with the headline, “1 Million Workers/90 million iPhones, /17 suicides. Is This Where Your Gadgets Come From. Should You Care?”
Said Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson through a spokesman: “As the largest gadget maker in the world, Foxconn is a natural subject for both business and technology magazines. But the facts are these: we assigned the story long before the BW piece, the photography is our own, and the thrust of the article is very different: it’s about Joel Johnson‘s personal struggle with the moral dimension of the consumerist culture that he feeds in his job as a high-profile gadget writer. If the covers look somewhat similar, that’s because Chinese electronics factories look similar. We shot what we wrote about.”
In its December issue, Wired drew the ire of feminists for putting a woman’s breasts — with no other part of her body visible — on its cover to illustrate a story on tissue engineering. The title: “100% natural. Who Needs Implants?”
Kelly gang
The seventh annual Kelly Gang Charity fundraiser streams back into Michael’s restaurant on the evening of March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, after taking a year off in 2010 to march behind that year’s Grand Marshall, NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
This year, Greg Kelly, co-host of Good Day New York, is serving as the honorary chairman. The first 100 guests will receive complimentary copies of author Mary Pat Kelly‘s recently released paperback version of “Galway Bay.”
The hardcover edition was released two years ago, tracing a family history from 19th century Ireland in the Great Famine to Chicago. It is currently being developed for TV by Jean Doumanian Productions.
You don’t have to be a Kelly or even Irish to attend — as long as your check clears.
The group, now headed by American Express Publishing CEO Ed Kelly — who took over as chairman from CBS’s “Blue Bloods” Executive Producer Tom Kelly — is raising money for Tuesday’s Children, which aids families who lost a loved one in events connected to the 9/11 attacks, and Catholic Relief Services in Haiti.
[Full disclosure: Media Ink’s Keith Kelly is a co-founder and current Secretary of the Kelly Gang.]
For tickets go to: http://guest.cvent.com/d/cdqgqv/4W. kkelly@nypost.com