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Layoffs are imminent at Atlantic Unbound
The Atlantic Monthly plans to compact its internet unit, Atlantic Unbound. It will no longer publish the full content of its magazine online, and the amount of internet-only content will be scaled down. The magazine told its staff about the cuts in a meeting on Thursday. Three of the magazine's seven new-media positions will be eliminated, including its web production manager and its editorial director. The impending layoffs serve as yet another indication that times are tough on the web -- the Atlantic Unbound has been online since 1996, making it just about the first literary magazine to hit the web. In contrast, The New Yorker first began publishing its content online last month. The Atlantic's web site has been nominated for the National Magazine Award for general excellence three times and was nominated for the design award this year.
Scholastic is highest bidder on eToys' assets
Scholastic, a publisher and vendor of children’s books, has placed the high bid in the auction of the inventory of defunct online retailer eToys. Scholastic’s bid is conditional, however--it will only get eToys’ assets if it also places the highest bid in an upcoming auction for all of eToys’ shares. If Scholastic is able to buy the shares, it will use the eToys' inventory in its own e-commerce venture, which is set to launch in three or four months. Other eToys' assets are for sale as well, including its domain name, office equipment and computer software and hardware. EToys sold its BabyCenter division to consumer-products giant Johnson & Johnson earlier this month for $10 million. EToys, once a Wall Street darling, shuttered its web site earlier this month; the debt-ridden company’s sales had been too weak during the holiday season to pull the company out of trouble.
Virgin Atlantic wires its air fleet for web access
Virgin Atlantic Airways plans to offer email and internet access on all seats of its aircraft. Although other airlines have dabbled in offering internet access, it has been limited to business and first-class sections. Virgin Atlantic’s email and internet system, powered by Tenzing Communications, will be in place on all 20 of its aircraft by the end of the year, with some installations completed as soon as this summer. The systems are upgradeable, and upgrades may become necessary. Detractors and Virgin competitors say that the Tenzing system, which stores emails and web sites on servers within the airplane, may be too slow to satisfy the web-surfing desires of the transatlantic and transcontinental passengers who will use the in-flight email and web access.
Drkoop offers doctorly advice on being laid off
So well-acquainted with the problems of being a downsizing dot.com is Drkoop.com that the medical information portal has decided to put its expertise to use. An article now on the site in the "Mental Health" section is one entitled "Downsized and Out: Coping With Unexpected Job Loss." It was posted at the end of January, a scant two weeks after Drkoop's largest round of layoffs to date, in which 45 people were fired. The company has shuttered its Austin offices, moving its headquarters to Santa Monica, Calif. The timing has suggested to some that the article was an internal document that saddened Drkoop employees posted themselves. And yet it seems oddly lacking in any particularly insightful information. It notes, for instance, that having one's job cut unexpectedly can lead to "considerable grief and suffering." And it makes the most fleeting and general references to the economic environment spawning layoffs such as Drkoop's, saying merely that "more and more businesses are making cutbacks or going out of business." Drkoop did not respond to a Media Life inquiry about the timing behind the article's publication.
JFK Jr.’s Jeep fetches big bucks on eBay
A buyer in Shreveport, La., has snapped up John F. Kennedy Jr.’s 1995 Jeep Wrangler Sahara on eBay for the not-such-a-bargain price of $57,100. The Jeep originally sold for $13,000. The buyer does not wish to publicize his identity. An eBay official describes the buyer as a long-standing Kennedy fan. The Jeep, morbidly enough, is the one that Kennedy drove to an airport in New Jersey the same night he crashed his plane into the sea, killing himself, his wife and his sister-in-law. Strangely, the $57,100 price tag is the identical price that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’1974 BMW Bavaria fetched a few months ago. The Kennedy Jeep package includes a copy of the title with Kennedy’s name and address on it, plus a snapshot of John-John sitting in the driver’s seat.
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