Digital conglomerate Vox Media has laid off 6% off its staff today, as the coronavirus continues to grind away at revenues — with CNBC reporting earlier this week that projections for Q2 fell 40% below expectations, and full-year revenues are expected to miss by 25%.
Vox, which is the parent company to its eponymous digital news brand as well as other entities including New York Magazine, Vulture, and The Verge, has now laid off 70 employees, Variety reports. Per a company memo from CEO Jim Bankoff, the majority of the layoffs came from the same 100 staffers who were furloughed in May. At the time, Vox said it was furloughing 9% of its staff for a three-month period, though roughly a third of those employees — who did not take buyouts — have been brought back onboard, Bankoff said.
The recent layoffs predominantly affect editorial positions at Curbed and SB Nation, as well as IT, office operations, and events staff — the latter three sectors clearly having been impacted by quarantining. In a memo to staffers obtained by Variety, Bankoff said that laid off employees will receive “health insurance and severance packages that recognize the unprecedented circumstances of the crisis.”
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At the same time, Vox is reinstating full salaries for those making at least $130,000 — who previously took a reduction as part of the furloughs in May. That said, Bankoff, Vox president Pam Wasserstein, and other top executives will continue to take salary cuts, per Variety.
“It goes without saying by now that COVID-19 has had an impact that no one could have anticipated,” Bankoff wrote to staff. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that the second half of the year will not rebound anywhere near our pre-COVID forecasts. Furthermore, as cases rise tragically across the country and many of our elected leaders avoid decisive action, we have very limited visibility into the timing or strength of a recovery.”
In response to the layoffs, the Vox Media Union wrote in a statement on Twitter that it had been in negotiations with management about the layoffs for three days, and had presented multiple solutions to avoid layoffs altogether — almost all of which the company rebuffed. That said, the union says it was able to negotiate less layoffs, an earlier conclusion of the salary reductions (which were set to run through July 31), and the aforementioned enhanced severance packages.
A statement from the Vox Media Union committees on today’s layoffs pic.twitter.com/XwRaU9ua7Q
— Vox Media Union (@vox_union) July 16, 2020
