Photographer Will Steacy has released a somewhat painful photo essay that shows the paper’s dramatic decline. As Wired magazine describes, Steacy’s father worked at the Inquirer for almost 30 years until he and many others were downsized. The shrinking of the Inquirer‘s staff was just a microcosm of the much larger decline of the U.S. newspaper industry as a whole, with the number of full-time media employees now at its lowest level since 1978.

After its bankruptcy, The Inquirer moved its newsroom from the massive, 87-year-old, 526,000-square-foot headquarters known as the “Tower of Truth” in downtown Philadelphia to a single floor of a former department store near Chinatown. Steacy took photos of both the old newsroom and the new — and of everything in between, including most of the remaining staff, the paper’s old printers and the cluttered desks of various editors and reporters.

The new Inquirer newsroom looks like somewhere a high-school paper would be produced, not a newspaper that serves a city of 1.5 million. And Steacy tells Wired that when his father was laid off in 2011, he actually had to put the project on hold because it became too emotional for him. He believes — as many do — that the future of journalism is a question mark as great newspapers like the Inquirer continue to be downsized or even go bankrupt. As he puts it:

“The internet, for lack of a better metaphor, makes up the branches of the tree. But newspapers have centuries-long traditions of being the roots of the tree. If the roots of tree rot and crumble the rest of the tree will fall with it.”

Photos courtesy of Will Steacy

Rumors of widespread staff reductions at the publishing conglomerate have been floating around in media circles for several days, with some estimates of the cuts running as high as 700 people. According to a number of reports, the layoffs will hit virtually every aspect of the company, including most of its 21 magazine titles such as People, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.

At the eponymous magazine that started the empire, Time editor Rick Stengel said he was looking for half a dozen staffers to take a voluntary buyout, and if that number isn’t reached by Feb. 13, there will be mandatory layoffs. People magazine, one of the company’s top titles in terms of subscribers, said that it was looking for nine people to take voluntary buyouts — three writers and six reporters or researchers — or there will be layoffs.

Lang says Time needs to be more nimble

The bleeding is apparently so bad at the media giant that there was even a report from Reuters that Time may sell its iconic headquarters in New York City. Lang said in her memo that the cuts were required in order to transform Time into a more nimble, multi-platform company:

“With the significant and ongoing changes in our industry, we must continue to transform our company into one that is leaner, more nimble and more innately multi-platform. These reductions are part of this important transformation process.”

The broader story at Time is the same as it is at newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post: print advertising revenue, which has been the company’s bread-and-butter for decades, is in free fall — and digital advertising and online revenue have not even come close to making up the difference. In the nine months ended in September, revenues at Time fell by 6 percent, and operating profit dropped a whopping 38 percent.

Since Lang arrived as CEO a year ago, the former ad agency executive has made a number of moves to try and boost Time’s digital revenues, including a deal with Apple to sell subscriptions through the company’s iOS Newsstand app. But the benefits of such arrangements — whatever they may be — don’t seem to be enough to stem the ongoing damage.

When his main competitor Newsweek announced that it was shutting down its print edition after a merger with Tina Brown’s Daily Beast online venture, Stengel said that Time magazine had “done very well and we’ll continue to do well.” But given what we’ve seen at other media entities, these cuts are unlikely to be the end of the pain for Time Inc.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock / Aperture 51

Facing declining advertising pages and the need to emphasize “digital, mobile and video platforms” over print, the company said that it will stop selling Everyday Food as a standalone monthly publication. Rather, subscribers to the monthly Martha Stewart Living will receive an Everyday Food “supplement” five times a year, and more of its content will be available online starting next year. MSLO will try to sell Whole Living, but if it can’t find a buyer its content will be folded into Martha Stewart Living.

The New York Times‘ Media Decoder blog reported that 70 MSLO employees, out of about 600, are being laid off: “Employees at Martha Stewart Living have not been able to return to work this week because Hurricane Sandy flooded the basement of their downtown offices. As a result, many of them learned of layoffs by phone and e-mail.”

MSLO expects the combined changes to save $33 to $35 million annually. The company also announced a handful of digital initiatives: a new PBS show, “several exciting new digital video series made for the web” and more apps.

“As a whole, MSLO’s total digital audience has grown an average of 20 to 25 percent year over year every month since January 2012,” president and CEO Lisa Gersh said. “Following a careful evaluation of our media portfolio, we are responding to clear trends we are seeing across the industry to give our consumers what they are telling us they want: more video, more of the inspiration, solutions and expert advice and how-to content our brands offer in digital formats, across more platforms and on a more frequent basis.”

The news was first reported by Peter Kafka at All Things Digital. In a blog post, Daily editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo confirmed the changes to the sports and opinion sections, and News Corporation issued a press release (below) confirming the layoffs.

Sports and opinion “garnered the lightest traffic and reorganizing them will allow us to focus on the areas that have proven most popular,” Angelo writes. The opinion section will be folded into the rest of the news pages, and the sports section will sacrifice original reporting for “[offerings] from our friends and partners like Fox Sports.”

As a further cost-saving measure, The Daily will be locked in portrait mode — though the company notes in a press release (full release below) that’s also “the mode in which the vast majority of its readers view content.” The Daily still plans to launch its weekend magazine, WKND.

The Daily, which launched in February 2011, is reportedly “on watch” as News Corp plans to spin off its publishing unit. In a recent letter to staff, Daily editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo told them to ignore “the latest misinformed, untrue rumors of our imminent demise.” The Daily has been vague about sharing its number of paid subscribers — the most recent figure is “over 100,000,” suggesting just a small increase since the beginning of the year.

Release:

The Daily Announces Content Changes, Staff Reorganization 

New York, NY, July 31, 2012 – The Daily, News Corp’s daily national news publication built exclusively for tablets and touchscreen devices, today announced content and personnel changes at the publication designed to streamline its production, focus resources on its most popular features, and reflect the changing business environment for news and media.

The implemented changes to The Daily include the following:

 Ø  A total of 50 full-time employees, 29 percent of the full-time staff, will be released.

Ø  The Sports and Opinion sections, which saw the lightest traffic, are being reorganized.  Sports reporting will now be provided by content partners, like Fox Sports, while existing features like photo galleries and the ability to track favorite teams via a customizable sports page will remain. The Daily will no longer have a standalone Opinion section. Opinion pieces and editorials will appear in the news pages, clearly marked, from time to time as appropriate.

Ø  The Daily will move to a portrait-only orientation – the mode in which the vast majority of its readers view content – though video will still be viewable in landscape mode.

Ø  The Daily will continue to invest in the content its readers use the most: original reporting, strong visual elements, great photography and video, award-winning design, infographics, and interactivity.  These are the features that continue to make The Daily unique and that have seen heaviest traffic; they will make up a greater percentage of each edition going forward.

 “These are important changes that will allow The Daily to be more nimble editorially and to focus on the elements that our readers have told us through their consumption that they like and want,” said Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo.  “Unfortunately, these changes have forced us to make difficult decisions and to say goodbye to some colleagues who have worked hard to make The Daily successful.  These moves were driven by the needs of the business. The Daily is the first of its kind, and it remains the best of its class.  We are still in the infancy of this innovative new media platform, but we have delivered excellent content, steadily increasing readership, quality reporting, and award-winning design. Our standards will not diminish as we move forward, nor will our enthusiasm for creating an outstanding daily digital publication.”

“We continue to believe in the future of tablet publications because we know the market for tablets and touchscreen devices will only expand,” said Publisher Greg Clayman. “As more and more people buy and use tablets in their daily lives, The Daily will grow with them. We have consistently remained one of the top-ranked paid news apps since our launch, we have steadily grown our subscriber base, and we have the world’s largest media and publishing company behind us.  Like all good digital products, however, we must change and evolve to remain fresh, competitive and sustainable.”

Google announced Monday that it has purchased Meebo, the social media and advertising company, to add a team of engineers and some publisher-friendly social tools to its Google+ efforts.

In a statement, Google said Meebo (see disclosure below) would work closely with its Google+ team after the purchase:

With the Meebo team’s expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google+ team. We look forward to closing the transaction and working with the Meebo team to create more ways for users to engage online.

In a blog post on their site, Meebo announced news of the purchase:

We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google! For more than seven years we’ve been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging. Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.

BetaBeat reported that much of Meebo’s staff was let go before the purchase was announced. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on personnel changes at Meebo, but a source familiar with the company’s plans said that Seth Sternberg, Meebo’s CEO, and Sandy Jen, the CTO, will join Google in the purchase as well as an unspecified number of engineers from Meebo’s product team.

Meebo, founded in 2005, was originally known for its web chat client called Meebo Messenger. It has now expanded to provide a Meebo Bar on webpages that encourage readers to share a site’s content through social media. Individual consumers are also encouraged to create profiles where they can mark their likes and dislikes and receive articles that reflect these preferences.

Meebo has attracted significant funding from investors, raising more than $60 million, including $25 million in a 2010 fourth round.

AllThingsD originally reported last month that Google was in talks to purchase Meebo for $100 million, and TechCrunch reported Monday that the final number was in that ballpark. A Google spokesperson declined to provide information on the terms of the purchase.

Disclosure: Meebo is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, GigaOM. Om Malik, founder of GigaOM, is also a venture partner at True.

This is the stark reality of modern newspapers, the result of a coincidence of commercial necessity and technological innovation.

There is sure to be more hand-wringing at the decision by Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) (TM) to cut a further 75 jobs, amounting to 18.75% of its editorial workforce.

But, without wishing to appear to bless another tranche of redundancies at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People, it must be obvious to all that it is the way of the world.

Most people are expected to leave voluntarily and it is to be hoped they pick up enough severance cash to ensure they can pay their mortgages for some time to come.

What many of them will know is that getting a replacement job is going to be very tricky indeed.

I expect both the British Association of Journalists (BAJ) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) will issue statements condemning the action.

They will be heartfelt and sincere, of course, but they will not change the course of a process that is now irreversible.

In June 2010, I reported that TM was making 200 editorial staff redundant. That 25% cut resulted in the overall staffing being reduced to the current 400.

So the three papers will end up in a couple of months’ time with 325 journalists between them. (I seem to recall, when I edited the Daily Mirror 20-odd years ago, that it alone had more than 400 staff).

TM has announced that its move is linked to what it calls “editorial restructuring”, which involves an expansion of its ContentWatch production system.

In its statement this afternoon, TM claimed that ContentWatch had “helped transform the newsroom”. It probably has. And it is probably right in claiming also that the restructuring will “create an even more efficient multimedia operation.”

None of can ignore the fact that it is possible to do so much so quickly with advancing digital tools.

Note, however, that “a centralised reporting and production hub” will operate with “teams working across all three titles” over seven days.

I can understand the production part of that operation. I am less sanguine about reporters working across titles.

Then again, somewhat contradictorily, the company’s statement also says that there will be a “retention of bespoke editorial teams for each title to protect their unique identity.”

I’m not quite certain how that squares with editors having “access to a greater number of reporters than is currently available to them on an individual basis.”

Clearly, the editors – Richard Wallace, Tina Weaver and Lloyd Embley – have their work cut out to bed in the new system.

Wallace is evidently going to assume management responsibility for the new system while continuing to edit the Daily Mirror. Good luck with that, Richard.

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

Further editorial cuts will also be made at the Sunday Times, with staff due to be briefed about the scale of cutbacks at the Times’s News International sister title imminently.

At the Times the plan is to axe one in seven editorial positions, with the bulk of the job reductions coming from reductions in the number of casual staff used at the newspaper.

Journalists will also be asked to consider taking voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies have not been ruled out.

News International sources blamed the tough economic climate and the rising cost of newsprint for the cuts, which follow restructuring of the company’s commercial departments.

However, it is understood there are no plans to increase the Times’s cover price, or to drop any sections or reduce the number of pages printed. The Times costs £1 from Monday to Friday and £1.50 on Saturdays.

The Sun is not affected by the cutbacks, but News International’s tabloid business has already seen the News of the World close this year in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

Everything Everywhere is currently in the process of laying off 1,200 employees, a strategy it announced back in September, as part of an overall plan to reduce headcount and cut costs after the merger of the two operators.

But a report late last week in The Times alleged that the operator was actually preparing to axe an additional 3,000 employees over the next four years — in other words, layoffs totalling some 4,200. The company told news site Total Telecom that the higher number was “speculative” and said that there were “currently no plans” for further reorganisation beyond the 1,200 already announced.

In all, the merged operations of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK resulted in a staff of 16,000.

Meanwhile, Telefonica-owned O2 in the UK is preparing to lay off hundreds of employees as it mergers its customer sales and customer services departments and tries to rethink how it sells products across mobile, broadband and media services.

The news was first reported by CityAM.

The restructure will result in some 10 senior managers changing roles. So far we know that finance officer Ramon Ros will return to parent company Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) in Madrid and customer service director Cheryl Black will retire. Steve Shurrock will take on a new role as chief executive of O2 Ireland.

Consultations with other O2 workers will begin in January.

The company said it would seek to make the cuts at its Trinity Mirror Merseyside subsidiary through voluntary redundancy where possible.

Trinity Mirror Merseyside publishes two dailies

This article originally appeared in © Guardian News & Media Ltd..

After the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) last month issued a consultation urging quicker action and consideration for allowing Ofcom to order suspensions by ISPs, UK Music – an umbrella representing AIM, BASCA, labels group BPI, MPA, MU, PPL and PRS for Music – on Tuesday issued a statement saying: “We believe that government intervention is extremely welcome and that, subject to assessment, Ofcom should be granted appropriate and proportionate powers as directed by the secretary of state”.

– So it’s hard to square that apparent backing for the new proposals with Times Online’s report that UK Music “is preparing to back down from its demands that people caught downloading songs illegally be disconnected from the internet after a revolt by leading musicians”.

– Guardian.co.uk, too, notes that UK Music’s statement “stopped short” of declaring its support for disconnections.

In July, UK Music had said measures in the original Digital Britain, which lacked the option of disconnections or suspensions, “will still not be enough” to reduce piracy by the target of 70 percent within two to three years. It called for a system of account suspensions running from 72 hours to four months. And that could be exactly what it gets if BIS’ amendments hold up.

While opposition to account suspensions comes from some sections of the music biz, like the Featured Artists Coalition (not a UK Music member) this has been a perennial, rather than a new, complaint. ISPs also continue to oppose the prospect they might be force to nuke customers.

Right now, UK Music is likely formulating a joint response behind the scenes with its constituents. We won’t know the final view of the music industry – as represented by UK Music – until after BIS’ September 29 deadline for responses to its consultation.