"Right sizing" costs jobs across-the-board at Rogers Publishing

[This post has been updated]Rogers Publishing CEO Brian Segal said in a memo to the entire staff of the division today that layoffs job eliminations made this morning were an effort to respond to a decaying advertising market and to allow the company to reallocate resources to new ventures, apparently most of them on the web. Across all of Rogers Media (including publishing, radio, television, Blue Jays, and in digital), it is said that about 100 people have been let go. [Update: a report in the Toronto Star says 25 people or about 10% of staff have been let go from non-baseball front office operations of the Blue Jays.]

I am not the first in our industry to say that this is a huge challenge, [said Segal] unlike any we’ve seen before. And after much careful study and consultation with many of you who run our businesses, we have made the extremely difficult decision to eliminate a number of positions today in Publishing. Those affected by this decision were made aware this morning....

The changes we are making today reflect our goal to save significant costs, to employ our editorial resources more efficiently, and to beef-up our sales resources against areas where the market is telling us we need to be. Our Consumer Marketing group will also increase its focus on revenue-generating areas.

Layoffs occurred throughout the company, at consumer and trade magazines alike. A full tally is not yet available, but among them were five people at Maclean's, including an associate editor and the last library staffer. Masthead reports that two were laid off from Glow (one web and one in-book art/edit staff), an associate art director at Today's Parent, a consumer marketing director, a senior editor at Profit and an account manager for the Rogers business group, which includes Profit, Canadian Business and MoneySense. It also said that at least five people were laid off at business-to-business titles.

A spokesman for Rogers would not say what the total of the layoffs were.

According to a concurrent memo from Rogers Media President and CEO Tony Viner :

The decision to eliminate these positions was made after very careful consideration by the leaders of our various impacted business units. These decisions had absolutely nothing to do with individual job performance. I understand how difficult it can be to say goodbye to our former team members. I firmly believe, however, that the decision to right-size in order to quickly deal with the global economic reality is the right decision for our businesses.

The full texts of Segal's and Viner's memorandums are available at mastheadonline.

The company is holding a series of half-hour briefings with staff tomorrow (Wednesday) in Toronto and in Montreal on Thursday.

Toronto Meeting Schedule:
9-9:30 a.m.: All Business and Professional Publishing employees
9:45-10:15: Consumer Publishing: Strategic Creative, Maclean’s, Marketing Solutions, Web Group, Today’s Parent, Production, Hello!, Glow, Corporate Sales
10:30-11:00: Consumer Publishing: Canadian Business, Chatelaine, Flare, Lou Lou, MoneySense, PROFIT, Consumer Marketing and Consumer Admin, Production, Cosmetics

Montreal Meeting Schedule
9-9:30 a.m.: Consumer Publishing Staff (Les Salles de Formation)
9:30-10:00: Business and Professional Publishing Staff (Les Salles de Formation)