
Macworld lays off most staff - MattRogish
https://twitter.com/DanFrakes/status/509753738454528000
======
munificent
Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between
you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are
countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to
hone your craft.

Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer _for
a living._ Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed
digitally, almost all of the money is falling out of it.

~~~
aikah
> almost all of the money is falling out of it.

Well no money because nobody's paying for it,and since nobody's paying for it
the content is usually average at best.

Free information is great,but let's face it,quality news cost money and time.
What have we today?in the tech world? content farms
(readwrite,thenextweb,techcrunch,mashable...) where writers often know nothing
about the subject,or are using social justice warfare to manifacture outrage
in order to generate impressions( [http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-
women-on-stage-dive...](http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on-
stage-diversity-iwatch) ). How can that kind of news scale? readers are not
idiots. But most readers ,at the same time,refuse to pay for anything,so the
money has to come from somewhere,so we get sponsorised news too...

Real journalists or writers have skills,what's missing is a plateform where
pro journalists could monetize their skills to corporations directly,to write
serious reports on a specific subject for instance,intelligence,sourcing,or
just writing for the web(for commercial purposes,i.e. writing for content for
a corporate website).

~~~
convex
The current quality and quantity of information previously classified as
"news" is far beyond what has ever existed previously. Look at any news event
and compare the information that's immediately available now compared to
similar news events 20 or 30 years ago. People on the ground publish pictures,
videos, and reports _as the events are happening,_ and we can read reports
from any source in the world translated instantaneously into our native
languages. And we have access to all of this using a tiny computer that fits
in a pocket.

The idea that quality has decreased is simply an absurd and obvious myth
perpetuated by editors and professional writers who are unhappy that their
control over the journalism and publishing industries is evaporating.
Furthermore, the market has never really paid for journalism, which was always
subsidized by ads of questionable efficacy and ownership by wealthy
individuals.

Finally, the big secret is the a massive amount of non-fiction by professional
writers is embellished, plagiarized, or outright fabricated, and there is
almost no real fact-checking in the industry. The regular scandals are just
the tip of the iceberg.

Journalism and non-fiction writing as they exist now are in need of a major
overhaul. Thankfully, technology is creating a situation where the world is
naturally moving forward.

~~~
ska
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Straightforward reporting is in
very good shape right now, particularly due to the effects you mention.

Long form journalism and in-depth reporting is not doing nearly as well, and
is not well supported currently.

~~~
tormeh
Well, there are still a couple of good ones. The Economist is exceptional, but
it's there. Foreign Policy is also pretty good, though it the opinions are
less polished - it seems written by people who haven't had to defend their
article in front of colleagues before publishing. Anyway, it's good. On the
tech front there's Anandtech and partly Ars Technica. I doubt the world has
seen much better journalism than those four.

~~~
eru
And the best private blogs are really good. (Even if the average is pretty
poor.)

------
orbitur
I think it's worth noting that they let staff cover the event yesterday, and
then surprised (some of) them with a layoff today. Classy.

~~~
watty
I don't see anything unclassy about laying off workers after a big event. I'm
assuming there's a decline of work after a big event, so if they're
financially hurting a decline would be the correct time to have layoffs.

~~~
sosuke
Yup, same thing happens to QA and Devs after big game releases.

------
cdnsteve
We're at the turning point where great journalists are getting pushed out of
their careers because jobs are vanishing under their feet. The content model
has completely changed, some argue for the better. In the long term I fear the
quality of content written will suffer, article accuracy will be reduced and
we'll all be reading each others blogs about medicine [insert other topics
here] (without ever having studied it or any previous knowledge on the
subject). The Internet of "everyone's an expert" overnight is not something
I'm looking forward to. Just look at all the overnight social media
professionals. Many of these people don't have an understanding of how the
Internet (or email) even works but they'll throw down the hot keywords to make
themselves sound important; KPI's, User experience, etc etc.

I still feel there's huge opportunity in the learning space for online
education. If I was a journalist or writer with specialized knowledge in a
certain field, I'd focus my attention to that and bring my friends.

~~~
Touche
Journalists job is not to know about the thing they are covering; usually they
have only slightly more knowledge than the layman; their job is to have
relationships with people who can give them information the public doesn't
easily have.

These relationships that lead to information becoming available won't and
isn't going away, the people doing the reporting (now called bloggers) just
aren't getting paid (much) for it. It's now a hobby. And that's ok.

As far as writings from experts; science journals still exist and AFAIK are
not hurting or are in danger of being scaled back. Maybe someone with more
knowledge can speak on the state of academic journals.

------
eli
Bigger than Macworld. IDG, the parent company, has seen better days. They
killed the print editions of Computerworld and CSO not long ago.

~~~
erickhill
They started with InfoWorld in 2007.

~~~
eli
I guess my point was this says a lot more about legacy print publishing than
about macs.

------
basseq
Sad day. I still have a bunch of old Macworld issues.

Though that name seems like such an anachronism. The Apple universe isn't so
much "Mac" anymore.

------
themonk
This might be a good case study for dying traditional form of online media.
Credit goes to random dance of Google SERP. As per Alexa, search traffic (for
macworld.com) is gone down from 50% to 30% of total traffic, in three months.
Google decided to do a (un)fair distribution of traffic.

Niche content companies should remain lean to survive.

------
bhouston
What is the catalyts for this? Apple's market share is similar to what is was
a few years ago. Is there a decline in ad revenues? What is the reason for
this.

~~~
declan
My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving
to create [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/)) is increased competition for
readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct,
especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out
more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually
paying for a _print_ subscription to MacWorld?

Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is
one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the
1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply
didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to
reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io
knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple
includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures
that make it less competitive against these upstarts.

Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for
jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd
appreciate the pointer:
[https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873](https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873)
[https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041](https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041)
[https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936](https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936)

~~~
brotoss
My only print subscription is Bloomberg Businessweek. Seeing the week's cover
in my mailbox is a highlight of my Saturday. But I got three years for $20.

------
LandonAB
That sucks. I realize Macworld still exists but won't be the same. Losing a
lot of great writers that I've enjoyed for years.

------
than
MacWorld was such a big part of my childhood, and a catalyst for why I'm able
to make a living making things on the web today.

I hope the talented writers and editors who've been laid off get snapped up
quickly.

------
u124556
Why? where they in charge of the streaming yesterday?

------
smackfu
They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write
for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they
didn't do that.

~~~
eli
They are. But many of them are now freelancers instead of fulltime.

------
shenanigoat
Hi, I just stopped by to say 'basic income'.

~~~
runn1ng
Hey, I just stopped by to downvote you.

------
marssaxman
I did not realize that Macworld still existed.

------
jacquesm
IDG is slowly dying. I don't think they'll see 2025, possibly not even 2020.

------
yarou
I think it speaks volumes to the downward trend of Apple these days.

~~~
doe88
or the _print_ business.

~~~
ilikemustard
No no no, clearly it's all because of Apple. All other print magazines are
thriving!!! /s

