We heard rumors this morning, and now Hachette has confirmed it in a press release.

"It is with a feeling of sadness that I make the announcement to close one of our magazines," says Lemarchand. "However, we believe the best strategy in the upscale shelter segment is to boldly focus our resources and investment on ELLE DECOR, which is the ad-page leader within the U.S. market. Despite the downturn in ad pages that has affected all magazines, the ELLE DECOR brand has multiple opportunities for growth across all platforms."

No word yet on the number of layoffs. If you know more, email us.

UPDATE: One (unconfirmed) tipster tells us that the entire editorial staff is being let go, and the business staff will be absorbed into other publications.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Hachette has sold five magazines to Bonnier, for less than $5 million total: Popular Photography, Flying, Boating, Sound & Vision and American Photo. Better than dying!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.ABC News, which has already canceled all of its newspaper subscriptions, is closing its in-house library and converting it into a "Digital Research Facility." Which we assume means "a computer."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Boston Globe brinksmanship update: the NYT Co. says "Closure is a very real path for the Company to take... The Guild seems to believe it can reject the contract, prevent implementation and thereby force further negotiation. That's not right. Time is of the essence." Accept the god damn contract or die, in other words. Hardball.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Ha, there is a new site, on the internet, called WeHaventLaidAnyoneOff.com, where companies can pay $100 in order to paste up their logo and brag about how they haven't fired anyone in the past year. So far they have about 30 subscribers. Not too many of which are media companies. [Dark joke about this site laying off their staff].

Message from Alain Lemarchand, President & CEO, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.

Dear colleagues,

I strongly believe that one of this company's primary commitments to you, our employees, and to our customers is to implement a solid strategy that ensures our ability to compete. Therefore, I am constantly evaluating how we can improve our company's efficiencies while protecting our high standards and the quality of our products.

After reviewing extensive analysis I have come to the conclusion that outsourcing certain functions in IT and Finance is the next step for us to take. It has been a hard decision to make. A number of other publishing companies have had success with outsourcing, and we expect that this move will generate savings while making us more flexible for the future. We will partner with a highly regarded global provider with strong media and publishing experience as well as knowledge of innovative best practices.

In the coming weeks, the vendor's representatives will visit our offices in New York City to complete the analysis. Colleagues in Finance and IT may be asked to participate in informational interviews, and this is an important step to ensure that we make thoughtful and informed decisions as we proceed. The outsourcing will start in the third quarter, and the transition is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

I will keep you informed. I appreciate everyone's cooperation and support during this process because this move is very important for the company.

Alain Lemarchand

Message from Alain Lemarchand, President & CEO, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.

Dear colleagues,

Today's business environment requires decisive and quick action for the welfare of the company. This includes a number of difficult decisions on my part, some of which impact you personally. In this case, I deliberated long and carefully before coming to the conclusion that one of the steps that needs to be taken immediately is a cut in base salaries. Effective April 27, 2009, the salaries of all exempt employees will be reduced by 6% and the salaries of non- exempt employees by 3%. In addition, we are changing the regular work day from 7 ½ hours to 8 hours. For non-exempt employees, overtime will continue to be calculated on a weekly basis and will be paid for all hours worked over 40 hours.

I understand that this economy has already had an impact on each of you and that this represents another loss. I am sorry for that. We hope that taking this measure across the company will save headcount in the long run. I know you join me in wanting this company to remain competitive in this challenging marketplace. I want to assure you that once the economic picture improves, we will reevaluate this decision.

I thank you for your continued dedication to your work. Your professionalism and contributions are essential to the ultimate performance and success of HFM U.S.

Alain Lemarchand

The parent company Lagardère SCA instead dispatched Alain Lemarchand, a Frenchman with no U.S. publishing experience, to reassure staff the company wasn't for sale, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Instead, Lermarchand would apparently continue from close range the sort of resource depravation his bosses had once practiced from afar. The CEO has rewritten his own budget twice in six months, according to the Journal, laid off receptionists on four of six floors and is now talking companywide job cuts.

This is how Lermarchand articulated the company's new/old ethos to the WSJ: ""We have to make sure every dollar we spend is unavoidable."

It might not be fair that the CEO must take on the weighty baggage of Hachette U.S.'s mistreatment in years past; surely every magazine group is in the midst of layoffs and cost-cutting at the moment. But surely he can't expect his troops to take much inspiration from his grand plan: Yet another reorganization and an admonition to get beyond "print audiences." As Hachette staffers know all too well, digital reorgs don't get far on gruel.

As first reported by Publishers Lunch, an industry newsletter, Hachette is giving bonuses equal to one week’s salary to every employee in the company, in addition to the regular bonuses for which staff members are eligible.

How can they afford it? Well, they're part of Little, Brown, which has signed some pretty huge deals recently—Tina Fey's $6 million "humorous essay" book-thing, and they also have Stephanie Meyer, of blockbuster Twilight fame. It's kind of the unattainable publishing gold standard that's fast disappearing, though—they might end up regretting that $6 million Fey deal if it doesn't come close to earning out.

Publishing Displays Its Split Personality [NYT]

Elle, you'll recall, boasts a creative director named Joe Zee, a free-spending man who hired his "rumored paramour," Keith Pollock, to head the magazine's website. That move didn't appear to be motivated by business sense, given Pollock's background in retail. But Pollock couldn't hang on forever with only Zee's support; he recently left the magazine (at about the same time as Hachette boss Jack Kliger, whose legacy wasn't helped much by Elle's recent performance).

Pollock, we hear, may have landed a job with the production company of Stylista, the new reality show starring Elle fashion news director Anne Slowey. But the magazine he left behind continues to wrestle with how to successfully establish itself online—and how to retain its traditional audience in print.

So could Zee's overt gayness be pulling the magazine's style so far away from the heterosexual side of the spectrum that it's turning off straight female readers? An Elle spokesperson says that in his role as creative director, Zee does "everything from styling, editing, working with the Art Dept, etc." But she says that his input on major decisions like cover choices is just one of "dozens" of voices.

But another insider characterizes the covers as "all Zee's doing." The truth is likely somewhere in between, but there's no question Zee is a major driving force in the magazine's look.

So with Kliger out, Pollock gone, and the magazine in a shaky position, could Zee's job be on the line as well—because he has made Elle TOO GAY? Probably not, really. But you be the judge:

• 
  Victor Ganzi, Hearst CEO—Ganzi quit this week, in a move that came as a shock to some. Though Hearst is not doing poorly, signs are there that it may be on the decline. Ad page counts at its top magazines are creeping downwards. Ganzi may have seen the writing on the wall.
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  Jack Kliger, Hachette CEO—Kliger lasted nearly a decade at Hachette, but stepped down this week. He leaves a company with an unsure future—layoffs, a questionable digital strategy, and stagnant ad growth will go down as big parts of the legacy of the end of his reign.
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  Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO—Friedman was sent packing from the publishing giant earlier this month, replaced by a man more than 20 years her junior. She spent nearly 30 years at Random House before coming to HarperCollins in 1997, and had a good deal of early success. But she was done in either by corporate infighting, or poor performance.
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  Peter Olson, Random House CEO—the book-loving, erudite bean counter was replaced last month by Markus Dohle, a robotic numbers guy who many feel will focus on earnings at the expense of "the romantic idea of literature." Uh, yea.

swordsmen at 10:36 AM Admin Reply
You guys got this story TOTALLY wrong. Todd is one of the smartest people in the business and is trying to make a company that had a terrible web strategy work. Magazines are failing because people like Joe Zee spend 200k in Milan getting his balls waxed. Remember Vitals-yeah. So Todd is dealing with a bunch of entitled fashion losers who wouldn't know the internet from a hole in their ass and basically has to start from scratch. These people that are whining sucked at their jobs and created websites with ZERO traffic. Todd's reputation in this business is stellar and for you to put such a nasty hit piece like this is deplorable, especially from an individual who does not court the press. Man I fucking hate publishing. I can just imagine all those entitled bitches and queens going, "Oh my God, what does he know?" Well when it comes to the web, everything.

lizzybennett at 11:45 AM Admin Reply
@swordsmen:
I've heard relatively the same thing.

[Original post]

The story begins with Anderman's discharge of a group of Web employees in May. As reported previously, up to 20 people were assembled in a room and left to wait for 15 minutes until Anderman found time to fire them.

But the digital chief was hardly any better with his remaining staff later that day. This is the story we heard: Just before meeting with his "digital team" in the afternoon, Anderman engaged in some IM chat with his wife. When he hooked his notebook computer up to the digital projector, the IM window was still open, so his staff got to see the chat in which their boss complained to his spouse that he was "shellshocked" at their reaction to all his changes. "I'm trying to run a BIZ!" he supposedly said, his wife replying "along the 'Oh my poor bear' lines," said a source.

When he realized what was on the projector screen, Anderman rushed to quickly shut off his laptop.

For Pollock, the meeting was a prelude of more ham-handedness to come. Premiere.com was to be under his management, but Anderman yanked it, leaving Pollock with Elle.com and ElleGirl.com. Then someone else was promoted above Pollock, at which point one of Pollock's hires was let go. Premier.com was then put back in the cluster with Elle.com and ElleGirl.com, but Pollock still only had purview over the latter two. Then, as the story goes, Anderman did something having to do with "content-aggregation policy," which Pollock and Berean found distasteful.

Anderman was hired only this past January, and he's clearly trying to shake things up and put his stamp on Hachette's foundering websites. But the freshly-hired executive need allies if, as expected, Hachette chief Jack Kliger's contract is not renewed later this year. And at this point, it sounds like the digital dunce is mostly making enemies.

(Photo via Magazine Publishers of America)

• Previously: Out comes the hatchet at Hachette

First of all, the layoffs. There is no official word yet, but we're hearing from inside that up to 20 people have gone, including executive Matthew Rosenberg; Joyann King, fashion editor at ElleGirl.com; Holly Seigal, senior editor of Ellegirl.com; and Dei Lewison, producer of the Elle websites. (There's no word on the former store salesman boyfriend whom insiders said Elle's self-promoting creative director, Joe Zee, installed at the fashion magazine's website.) The casualties were called to a meeting at 10.30 and then left to stew for quarter of an hour before digital boss Todd Anderman breezed in to fire them.

Another casualty is Glenn Kenny, whom Kliger talked up so much when he shut down the US edition of Premiere, the entertainment magazine. When the title was shuttered, Kliger said Kenny—the magazine's "most recognizable name"—would remain as an online movie critic and blogger. Kliger told the Wall Street Journal: "We saw trend lines for both ELLEgirl.com and Premiere.com moving in very positive, healthy directions, and we didn't necessarily feel that the print versions, which were not trending in a reasonable timeline toward profitability, enhanced what the digital versions were providing." So, why the cutbacks at a division which Kliger said would provide Hachette with over 20% of its revenues and most of its advertising growth?

First of all, Hachette has always been an abortion of a magazine company. It was a rag-tag collection of also-ran titles put together by David Pecker, now busy losing money at American Media. The company is owned by a dysfunctional French conglomerate, which never gave Kliger the resources or authority he needed to make the group a significant player. Much of Kliger's talk—about grand web plans—was just designed to bamboozle credulous journalists who might otherwise see a marginal magazine group in decline. Earlier in his tenure, Kliger was said to be much loved by his French bosses. More recently, we heard the relationship had broken down. "I'd heard the French were rats," he's known to complain. "But now I know."

Second, it's experiencing the same pressure to cut costs that is affecting other print publishing groups—except more so. Lagardere, the French company which owns Hachette, recently disclosed its US revenues were flat—and that was not even counting the revenues sacrificed when Premiere folded. The firm is moving out of the 40th floor of its Manhattan headquarters to save on rent; business trips have been curtailed; and editors are forced to print stories from inventory because editorial budgets do not allow new commissions.

Third, the grand multimedia experiment has been an utter failure. The early experiments with interactive TV were dismal, predictably. But nor have Kliger's more recent investments in branded web titles such as Premiere.com fulfilled the promise he saw for them. Hachette recently allowed Quantcast, a web measurement firm, to monitor traffic. Those numbers are not protected by a password. All the Hachette website put together garner no more than 200-250,ooo unique visitors per day; one of the biggest, Elle's website, only attracts of the order of 60,000. Embarrassing.

Hachette hasn't said whether it will be replacing any of the staff let go today. "There is no stability here, no one knows what's going on or what is happening," says a tipster. Elle, Car and Driver and various other titles certainly have some sort of following, even if exaggerated by pay-for-praise public relations interns. Their economic value may be better realized in some other media group, if anyone is still buying. As for Kliger himself, the tittle-tattle is that his contract is coming up for renewal—and it won't be.

[Photo shows Kliger with his former mistress, speaking coach Amy Griggs, and daughter.]