Time, Inc. Slashes Jobs: Britney Coverage May Suffer

Posted on January 16, 2007

Time, Inc. is getting ready to cut the jobs of many writers at its publications. Where it once took seven writers to create a story on Britney Spears' new life post K-Fed for People magazine, now Time, Inc. publications will have to make do with just one person writing the story of America's pop princess gone bad. And just one to write about Prince William and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton.

A New York Times story notes that it took seven people to write a five paragraph long article about Britney Spears and her new beau Isaac Cohen.

Seven reporters collaborated on People's Britney Spears article. To be fair, they were long paragraphs. But with layoffs expected this week at Time Inc., which publishes People, such reporter-heavy treatment is headed the way of Kevin Federline, Ms. Spears's soon-to-be-ex-husband.
Time Inc., the publishing division of Time Warner, is planning to cut more than 150 people, about half of them in editorial jobs across the company's best-known titles, like People, Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune. The cuts follow about 600 last year, many of them from the company's business side, and a decision to trim its roster by selling 18 of its roughly 150 titles.

This is an outrage -- how is People magazine supposed to cover Britney with only one writer? What if she forgets her underwear again? What if she breaks up with the new boyfriend on the same day? Who's going to cover her multiple outfit changes during one evening at Pure? It's just too much for one journalist to handle.

Sorry, we just couldn't stop ourselves. But seriously, this does not bode well for writers at all. Serious stories, like world events, politics and science are being cut at all major news outlets so that there can be more coverage of celebrities' antics. And that does not bode well for the state of journalism or for our society. Because the fact that we have somehow absorbed all these details of Britney's life actually kind of horrifies us, now that we think about it.

An executive at a competing publisher told the Times, "They're amputating in order to save the patient."