Web Publishing Becomes the Focus at Time Inc.

The NY Times is reporting (registration may be required) that Time Inc. is cutting 300 jobs to focus more on building new web sites and improving existing ones. I can't say I've heard of that exact explanation for cutting people before.

Reading between the lines though it's basically another old school publishing company, "trying to cope with the movement of readers and advertisers from print to the Web." Nothing particularly new there. In fact I've been part of the same sort of, "restructuring necessary to sustain progress." To be exact, I've been witness to 4 rounds of such re-organizations over the course of 4 or 5 years all within the same web department. I expect to hear from ex-coworkers in the next 6 to 12 months that yet another re-swizzling has taken place. Such is life in the corporate world!

Time's focus can't be faulted though. They've proven that they can be successful with their web sites. Take the People magazine site which managed to record just under 40 million page views in 24 hours during the Golden Globes. That's impressive reach no matter who you are. If they could improve their other brands to achieving anything remotely as popular, they should be in good shape for the continued onslaught on print publishers.

So who's losing their job? According to the article it appears its the "editorial" folks that are taking the hit. Presumably anyone with web specific skills has managed to escape this time around. It's stories like this that make me feel good about having a technical background.