Cold.

Time Inc. began laying off more than 250 people today at its top magazines, including its most profitable title, People, which said it was shutting down its Washington, Miami and Chicago bureaus entirely.

Time and Sports Illustrated also expected staff layoffs.
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Employees in those bureaus said they were “shell-shocked,” as the news was delivered by speakerphone from New York by Larry Hackett, People’s managing editor.

The news “was not sugar-coated,” one employee said. A total of about 15 people work in the three bureaus; the cuts take effect Feb. 1.

I guess the Beautiful People aren’t found in any of those cities anymore. It’s worth noting the important information in this sad, sad story.

The layoffs and cost-cutting comes as Time Inc., the nation’s biggest publisher, seeks to expand its branded properties on the Web, where the company sees its future.

“These layoffs are part of the necessary restructuring of our business as we continue to transform into a multi-platform publisher,” the company said in a statement. They “are focused on increasing efficiencies and allowing for closer collaboration between our digital and print businesses.”

E&P has the flip side of this, and all I can say is that I’m glad I’m not looking for a job in an ad department at a newspaper.

I know I’m an oddball; ads generally have a strongly negative effect on me, and if I remember them, it’s so that I won’t buy the product or service that inserted itself ungraciously into whatever media I was enjoying. But I seriously question the idea that internet ads are the “future,” in the sense that they’ll ever be able to support the Behemoths of publishing. Too many people in the media biz expect phat, easy lives of little effort for big financial gain. Increasingly, that’s only true for the staff-chopping executives and bean counters. It’s fascinating, as a blogger, to watch the slow, inevitable decline of the dead-tree and televised media, because a lot of it is so “shocking” to its members. I don’t forget what one Famous Journalist recently told me about making the transition to internet-based writing: “Before, when I wrote a column, I’d work maybe 3 hours a day. Now, I have to work for six, even eight hours just to keep up.”

Wake up, sternographers. Outsourcing, cutbacks and downsizing are coming your way. In large part because of people like me, who understand that there are faster, easier, ad-free ways to procure information. We’re also very tired of paying for your free lunches.