Hearst cut 200 magazine jobs to 'reimagine' teams — the union called it cruel

In the week before Thanksgiving 2024, Debi Chirichella, president of Hearst Magazines — home to more than 25 US brands including Elle, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar and Town & Country — sent staff a memo: the company had decided to 'reallocate resources to better support our goals and continue our focus on digital innovation while strengthening our best in class print products.' It would 'scale back in areas that do not support our core strategy' and 'eliminate certain positions as we reimagine our team structures.' The memo did not say which departments, or how many people.

The number came out anyway: around 200 employees, most based at Hearst Tower on Eighth Avenue. The Writers Guild of America East counted 197 people, 67 of them members of the Hearst Union. 'Today, the consistently anti-union Hearst Magazines became the latest media company to enact needless, irresponsible and cruel layoffs of editorial employees,' said WGAE executive director Sam Wheeler, adding that 'the small army of senior executives with make-work jobs and self-important titles, who add little to nothing to build Hearst's brands, apparently made it through today relatively unscathed.'

The cuts landed while Hearst pushed new machinery: the AURA digital advertising product, a subscription management platform, an expanded Hearst Global Solutions team in London — and a partnership with OpenAI. Readers, Wheeler argued, were the casualty: 'Readers go to Hearst because of the talent and craft of its editorial employees. These workers make Hearst what it is.' The industry told the same story — Condé Nast had cut 270 jobs a year earlier, Time had trimmed 15 per cent of its editorial staff in January, and Forbes, Sports Illustrated, Vice and BuzzFeed had all cut through the year.