Conde Nast reorganises, cuts continue elsewhere

After a number of rounds of redundancies and magazine closures ( here, here and here) Conde Nast has now announced that it’s refocussing its sales force by creating five separate brand categories. Here’s a small excerpt from the press release:

Each of Condé Nast Digital’s 26 online brands will now fall into one of the five categories, which are fashion and beauty; food, well-being and travel; bridal; technology; and culture and thought leader. “The improved sales structure allows for more focus on the individual brands as they grow, while leveraging the scale of all 26 sites,” said Drew Schutte. “This offers increased flexibility for our advertisers to reach our engaged audience of nearly 50 million unique users per month in a multitude of new ways.

The new structure also allows for seamless coordination with our print sellers, as we meet the increased demand for cross-channel selling.” In the meantime cuts continue at a number of magazines:

Graydon AWOL as Vanity Fair cuts staff
New York Post | October 24, 2009
Quote: Vanity Fair’s layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.

Fortune Magazine to Cut Number of Issues – WSJ.com
The Wall Street Journal | October 24, 2009
Quote: Capping a tumultuous year for business magazines, Fortune is planning to publish about one-quarter fewer issues annually and make other changes, joining the ranks of publications scrambling to reinvent themselves in the advertising downturn