Firm’s appearance signals Time axings: sources
IT’S
the consulting firm whose name must not be spoken. Time Inc. has hired dreaded McKinsey & Co. to suggest ways to “reengineer” itself, several sources tell Media Ink.
CEO Rich Battista, in announcing no-sale news in late April, said the company would be aggressive in cost controls.
Translation: Layoffs loom and properties likely will be sold.
One source said that executives overseeing Time, People, Sports Illustrated and InStyle are being told to not mention McKinsey directly in talks — but are referring to it internally as “K2.”
Another insider said that as part of the reengineering, the company plans to offer a voluntary round of buyouts to employees with 10 or more years experience. Depending on how many step forward, it would then go to non-voluntary layoffs, the source said.
Time Inc. is said to be looking for $100 million in cost cuts over the next year.
Time Inc. declined to comment on the speculation or confirm the presence of McKinsey in the building. Art of the layoff I
Louise Blouin is turning her remaining US-based employees into contract workers.
Roughly 20 to 30 full-time employees in New York, including editors, ad sales and office workers, were told last week that they were all being terminated in two weeks — but could “reapply” for their jobs as contract freelancers.
Blouin’s mini-art publishing empire, which includes Modern Painters, Art + Auction and the Web site Blouinartinfo.com, has struggled financially in recent years.
The company on Tuesday confirmed “a planned companywide restructuring of operations aimed at increasing the company’s flexibility.”
“Our mission has always been to report on the arts and culture everywhere in the world and to promote cross-cultural dialogue,” Blouin said in a statement.
“With that in mind our immediate plan is to increase from about 300 freelancers today to more than 400,” the statement added. Art of the layoff II
The Observer, which last week lost Editor-in-Chief Ken Kurson to consulting firm Teneo, where he is going to be a senior managing director, on Tuesday reportedly laid off four additional journalists.
The Observer was purchased in 2006 by real estate scion Jared
Kushner, who over the past year has taken on the role of key White House adviser to his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
News of the layoffs was first reported Tuesday by Women’s Wear Daily.
In November Kushner ended the print edition of the once-salmoncolored weekly and changed the name from the New York Observer to the Observer as it pursued a national digital audience.
Kushner put the publication into a family-owned trust in January and dismissed talk he was looking to sell.
He has since reportedly emerged as a person of interest by federal investigators looking into Trump associates’ dealings with Russian diplomats and business leaders. Making book
Book publishers are trying to fire up the masses for their fall and winter books as BookExpo for the trade is followed by BookCon for the general public, running from Wednesday through Sunday.
Hillary Clinton may have lost the election, but she is still pretty popular among the publishing world.
She is pulling a sellout crowd for her address Thursday evening at the Javits Center in the same glass ceiling venue where her plans to deliver a triumphant election night speech were upended by Trump’s victory.
Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, is keeping the title of her latest memoir under wraps but clearly hopes that following its October release it turns into one of its biggest hits this fall.
Chelsea Clinton will be appearing at BookCon on Sunday, to sign copies of her new book, titled “She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World,” from Penguin Young Readers.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s memoir, “Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery,” hits on Oct. 17, with one of the biggest first printings of the season for a nonfiction work.
The Knopf imprint said it plans to roll out 750,000 first printing copies, and his is one of the featured breakfast talks aimed at the trade Thursday morning.
One of the big breaking new books, “Hunting El Chapo” by Cole Merrell and Douglas Century from HarperCollins (owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post), is about the DEA team that engaged in an eight-year hunt to bring in Public Enemy No. 1. It also lands in October with a 200,000 copy first print.
On the fiction side, one of its biggest offerings is Louise Erdrich’s “Future Home of the Living God,” with 300,000 copies expected to hit in September.